Cakes

Lemon Curd Cake

May 17, 2019

Another day, another cake!

So, in our family, between March 13 and May 22 there are 8 birthdays! 8!

Two of my kids, both of my sister’s kids, me and my brother, and my mom and dad.

Plus, Easter gets thrown in there as well, so it is a dessert heavy time in our family.

Today we are tackling Lemon Curd Cake for my parent’s double birthday barbeque this weekend

My mom’s favourite is lemon. Lemon anything, lemon cake, lemon pie, lemon cookies you name it.

So, this recipe was bookmarked from day one for May.

This recipe calls for three recipes to complete it; cake, lemon curd and swiss lemon buttercream.

I am digging the swiss buttercream – way less sugar, roughly same amount of butter… I am becoming a convert from regular buttercream.

I am baking cake today and doing the filling and frosting tomorrow.

Onwards to the cake.

Basic cake recipe, flour, butter, sugar, eggs and sour cream with lemon zest

It came together easily.

New day next step – lemon curd double recipe

Let me just say this curd requires 16 egg yolks! 16!

I recruit some assistance on this one and the oldest is helping at the stove

It smells amazing. It is taking a long time but looks to be coming together just fine. Now waiting for it to cool

Now on to the swiss buttercream

I am careful in making sure the sugar is dissolved completely before removing it off the stove and whipping it into submission!

Sh*t

I was supposed to add some lemon curd after the butter had been incorporated

I added it before the butter, after the whipping

There I go getting all cocky with the frosting

It was looking like there was not enough – this is why

Hopefully I can add the butter after and it is not a waste.

Well so far so good.

The butter has been mixed in and the consistency seems to be ok for frosting.

The flavour is good too

Crisis averted – this is why there are not any photos of this part

It is now time to assemble.

Again, my trusty Wilton cake leveler is crushing it today with cutting the layers in half and now I add the curd for the filling

It is runny

Way runnier than I want it to be.

When I have a recipe with a curd like filling or caramel – basically oozy filling – I need to create the barrier with the frosting on the layer of cake before adding the curd so it doesn’t leak out all over the place.

Lesson learned.

Frosting is easy, goes on like I didn’t screw up the process

It looks and smells good.

Here is where Martha gets Martha-y. She wants you to put dot and lines of curd with a piping bag on the cake. I am taking this to my parent’s house and am putting the finishing touches on there

I ignore Martha’s instruction and I simply drizzle curd all over the top. It looks good and only required a ziplock bag.

It was really good and my mom really liked it

My big takeaway from this is that the curd is not really worth the effort

It is a bit of a pain to make and takes a lot of egg yolks

If I make this again – and I probably will because of my mom and her love of lemon – I would try with a mix rather than scratch for the curd see if it is really worth it