Lemon Birthday Cake

It’s no secret that anything to do with lemons , are my husband’s favorite . That includes , lemon rice soup , lemon pie , lemon meringue pie , lemon yogurt cake .. anything lemon he loves ! Me ? not so much .. it’s okay .. it’s not my favorite thing . So being a good wife that i am , i asked him , what kind of cake should i make for his birthday ? I imagined he’d say chocolate cake .. anything that has birthday in my mind .. i always picture it with chocolate .. Well i was surprised when he said ” Lemon cake ”

I never made lemon cake for a birthday cake . Lemon yogurt cake yes .. but i wasn’t planning to make a simple lemon yogurt cake for his birthday .. So i finally made up my mind , and yes , we’re going to make a cake with lemon curd filling and lemon icing . So .. maybe 12 lemons , would be enough ? Thank goodness i picked up 12 .. because that’s what i used !!

It was probably a little bit of work , but nothing unusual .. just like assembling any other cake , it does take time . It was about 4 hours .. or probably more if i were patient enough to let my lemon curd to be totally cold . Anyway .. make sure you have lemon juicer or your hand will be tired from juicing lemons LOL ..

 

 

 

Direction for cakes :

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter

1 1/4 cups white sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice

2 tbsp. of sour cream

1. In a mixer bowl , beat the sugar and the butter until light and fluffy about 5 minutes . Then beat the eggs in , one by one until blended . Then add the flour mixture with baking powder and salt , alternating with the milk mixture with vanilla extract . Until well blended .

2. Preheat oven to 350 F , line 8 inch round baking pan with parchment paper , then pour the batter into 2 pans . Bake at 350 F for about 30 minutes or so . Once it’s done , let it cool before removing from the pan .. let it cool totally before frosting . At this point you can always put them in the freezer for half an hour for easy frosting later on .

Direction for the Lemon Curd filling : 

1 tbsp. of lemon zest

1/2 cup of fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon cornstarch

6 tablespoons butter

3/4 cup white sugar

4 egg yolks, beaten

1.Mix the lemon zest , lemon juice and cornstarch together . Then mix in the butter and the sugar , melt the butter and sugar . Beat the eggs yolks , then start tempering the eggs yolks by adding the warm lemon juice butter mixture to the egg yolks while whisking , then pour the eggs mixture back into the lemon mixture , while whisking non stop , keep whisking about 5 minutes until the mixture thicken and covers the back of the spoon . Then refrigerate for 3 hours .

Direction for lemon icing : 

4 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

2 tablespoons milk

Mix all ingredients together until smooth frosting reached . If it’s too thick add more milk .

Assembling the cake : 

1. Once the cakes are totally cool , slice the cake in half , then add the lemon curd filling , top with 1 layer of cake , then frost the cake with lemon icing , top with one layer , add the curd , add another layer and finally top with the last layer of the cake and frost all over .