I love Lemon!!

I'll start by saying- if it's made with lemons, I'll probably LOVE it! I've been known to keep Lemon Curd in my fridge and eat it with a spoon :)

While I was home visiting my family last weekend, I made them Shrimp Po'Boys for dinner. I decided we needed a fancy dessert too...so I made Lemon Cake with Lemon Filling and Lemon Butter Cream Frosting!

The first thing I did was zest and juice 7 large lemons (no reason for 7, that's just how many I had!)
I made the curd first so it could chill. Put lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, butter and cornstarch in a saucepan and heat over medium high until it begins to boil. While it heats- crack three eggs, separate the whites and yolks, and whisk the yolks until smooth. (Make an Omelet with the whites!)

After the lemon mixture begins to boil, add small amounts of the hot liquid to the egg yolks to bring them to temperature. Then, add the yolks to the pot and whisk constantly until the mixture thickens. I removed my mixture from the heat and pushed it through a sieve to make sure there were no "chunks" of egg! It should look like this:


Next, I made the cake. For the record, this recipe says it is a lemon cake, and I didn't see anywhere in the recipe where you add anything lemon to the cake batter...

Start by creaming the butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time.


Alternate adding the dry ingredients and milk until you have a smooth batter. It will look like this:


Pour the batter into two greased and floured cake pans. And bake at 350 for about 30 minutes.

Next- work on the frosting. After reading reviews for this recipe, I decided to double the frosting so I could do a crumb coat and decorate! Cream two sticks of butter with lemon juice and zest. Slowing add powdered sugar.

I used about 6 cups of powdered sugar- the recipe called for 8!!! The consistency was wonderful!

I removed a portion of the frosting to tint and then assembled my cake (Split each cake into two layers. Add lemon curd to the first layer, then frosting, then lemon curd) and added a crumb coat (A crumb coat is a super thin layer to insure no crumbs get in the final coat- refrigerate the cake for 30 minutes to allow the crumb coat to set).
I piped the edges with my yellow tinted frosting (using a Ziploc bag) and decorated with slices of lemon. This is on my Grandma's BEAUTIFUL cake stand. I think that made the cake better :)

So- it was a gorgeous cake, but the next time I make it, I will use a different cake recipe. We thought the cake was a little dense and dry. I would also double the lemon curd filling, because the cake seemed to soak it up and I like LOTS of curd! Doubling the frosting was perfect. Best served at room temperature. This would be a great cake for Easter!