Bake-A-Long #3: Lemon Luxury Cake

Oh lemon curd, how I love thee, let me count the ways...

1. Butter

2. Lemon

3. Egg yolks

As individual foods, these may not be all that great to eat, but put them together and you get something quite tasty. That is why I made this cake. Well, that and the picture that accompanies the recipe (if only mine would have turned out that pretty). This cake requires multiple steps, none too difficult, but slightly time consuming. It is best to make it in stages. I made the lemon curd the night before to allow for the required cooling period. I always forget how long it takes to cook lemon curd when I'm making it. I had to keep telling Baxley the puppy "I'm almost done, try to hold it just a few minutes longer...". Thirty minutes later, I was done, and thankfully, he was able to hold it.

Sunday afternoon, I started the white chocolate custard for the butter cream. At first, I thought I may have gotten the white chocolate too hot when melting it with the butter, as it was grainy in appearance, but once I whisked in the eggs, everything came together. This was cooked to 140 F. It thickened slightly but was still fairly runny when complete.

While the custard was cooling, I baked the cakes. No surprises here, it was a straightforward recipe. The recipe called for superfine sugar, which is not available at my grocery store. The book suggests to lightly grind granulated sugar as a substitution. I skipped this step and used regular granulated sugar. My only problem was that I think I slightly over baked the cakes. While the cakes were cooling, I made the buttercream. Buttercream, like the curd, also always takes longer to make than I remember (lots of mixing).

Matt, having more patience than me, volunteered to cut the cakes in half and frost them. Thanks Matt, job well done. The lemon curd did not go all that far, we could have used a little more for filling.

I forgot to mention, I used Ghirardelli white chocolate for the cake and custard, as this is the only brand I could find, therefore, I did not have the vanilla seeds present in my frosting that the recipe calls for.

I will take credit for the final touch of lemon curd dots. Dots are the old standby for my amateur cake decorating skills.

Luckily, Ashlie the sister invited us over for dinner Sunday night so I had somewhere to bring my cake. It was enjoyed by all.

One note that I would like to make is, weighing the eggs does make a significant difference. For both the curd and the cake, I had to add more yolk or whole egg than suggested to achieve the correct weight. This is the perfect cookbook to use as scale with, as all the recipes are given in volume and weight measurements. I highly recommend using one. It makes for less dishes too, which is very important when you don't have a dishwasher in your home!

I'm not sure if I would make this cake again. I do think I will test out using key limes instead of lemons in it one day. We planted a key lime tree in our yard this summer, so this will be added to the list of things to make with our key limes whenever the tree fruits. This ends my post on lemon luxury cake, as I have a piece in the fridge calling my name.