[Inez] Lemon raspberry cake with lemon curd whipped cream (and colors)

You didn't think I was done with those sprinkles, did you?

I also wasn't done with lemon cake. I found this recipe and modified it a bit to my liking. It's a lemon-raspberry layer cake. I filled it with with raspberry sauce, lemon curd and lemon curd whipped cream (yum!) and frosted it with lemon curd whipped cream. Oh yeah, and I dyed it colors.


What's the occasion, you might ask. I'm not going to say I don't
believe in baking for occasions, because I definitely do believe in baking for occasions! Let's put it this way: I take a Quakerly view about baking fun stuff. Quakers traditionally believe that we shouldn't celebrate holidays because every day has the potential (and should be) a holy day. I believe that any day can be an occasion big enough to warrant a pink cake with yellow frosting and dinosaur sprinkles.

Let's talk about the cake. It's a sour cream cake, so it's moist and dense. It does not rise very high. If you want a sky-high cake you're going to need to make a lot of layers or use a different recipe. That said, I think this cake was a good vehicle for the flavors.

Lemon Raspberry Cake (makes two 8x8 layers)

• 1 1/2 c flour
• 2 1/4 t baking powder
• 1/2 t salt
• 1/2 c butter, softened
• 3/4 c sugar
• 1 1/2 T lemon zest (I just used the zest from 1 lemons)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 c sour cream (I didn't have quite enough so I used about 1/3 c sour cream and topped it off with yogurt
• 1/2 c fresh lemon juice (juice from 2 fairly large lemons)
• 1 1/2 c raspberries, fresh or froz

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and wax paper your pans. Sift together the flour, bp and salt in a small bowl.

Cream butter and sugar. Add the zest... You should be pretty excited by this point. I certainly was.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well. Oh, take a look at your raspberries now. I ended up cutting mine up a bit, but you don't want anything to hold you up once you've got the wets and the dries mixed together -- you want to be able to put the batter straight in the oven. Raspberries look good? Great.

I'm not sure why, but the recipe wants you to fold in the lemon juice and sour cream. If you're adding food coloring, do it now. I just kept adding red until it looked pretty.

Now fold in the flour mixture. Then fold in the raspberries!

Divide it between the pans right away

and bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until it's just turning golden on the edges and the center springs back up when you touch it lightly. OMG, pretty.

Cool five minutes in the pan and then flip it out onto a rack to finish cooling. I put it bottom down with the wax paper still on so it doesn't stick to the rack. If you're not assembling right after they've cooled, cover them with plastic wrap so they don't dry out at all.

Now there's still the lemon curd, raspberry sauce, and whipped cream to go. No problem. Take a break, have a snack. Loosen up your wrists, because you're about to be stirring for a while...

Lemon Curd

I made so much extra (I have a jar of lemon curd in my fridge! Fancy, eh?), but this amount should do you just fine:

• 1/4 c lemon juice (juice from one good-size lemon)
• 1 egg 
• 1/4 c + 2 T (give or take a bit) sugar
• 2 T butter

That's it! You could add zest, too, but then you have to strain it when you're done. Pooh-pooh.

Whisk the egg well, and then mix the egg, sugar, and lemon juice in a heavy bottomed saucepan.

Yeah, the daylight went away. Sorry.

Okay, put that mixture on low heat and start stirring. First it will get thinner as the sugar dissolves, then it doesn't do anything for a while. A long while. Just keep stirring away. Then all of a sudden you'll feel it start to thicken! It's very cool. It gets a bit thicker, and then eventually starts to bubble. Big bibbles that struggle to make it to the surface. Awesome. Let it bubble for a minute or three and then you're pretty much done. Put it in the fridge (covered) to cool.

The raspberry sauce is no problem after that. I took about a cup of frozen raspberries, thawed them in the microwave, mashed them up pretty good, and then threw them in a saucepan with about 1/4 cup of sugar. Put it on low heat, and stir it until it's pretty hot and the sugar is definitely dissolved. Sprinkle on a bit of corn starch (I think I used about 1/2 teaspoon?), and whisk it in. Stir for another couple minutes or until it's as thick as you want. Put that in the fridge, too.

It looks like boring old raspberry jam but it smells like raspberry heaven.

When everything is chilled, make your whipped cream. The recipe called for 1 c whipped cream but frankly that wasn't enough. Do this:

• 1 1/2 c whipping cream
• 3 T confectioners sugar
• (food coloring)
• 5 T lemon curd

Beat the whipping cream and sugar (and food coloring, if you choose) until beautiful peaks form. Don't overdo it! I overdid it a little bit. I blame the lighting. If it starts looking the slightest bit rough in texture, stop immediately. It should be smooth and light, but hold good peaks. Fold in the lemon curd.

The lighting was terrible for pictures, so I'm just going to explain this next bit:

Spread a thin layer of raspberry sauce on top of the bottom cake. DO NOT SPREAD IT ALL THE WAY TO THE EDGES. Seriously. Leave yourself at least half an inch. 

Spread a layer of lemon curd on top of the raspberry sauce. Ohhhh man.

Take some whipped cream and line that outer edge of the cake, where you didn't put the raspberry sauce and  lemon curd. (This is a little intense, but it will help you understand what I mean.) Then plop some on top and gently, gently spread it around. Do your best to meet the edge layer of whipped cream and the top layer, so that it traps the sauce and curd. Don't put too much whipped cream or it will make the cake unstable.

Put your second cake on top and frost it with the rest of the whipped cream.

Note: I recommend eating as much as possible of it on the first day. The whipped cream doesn't hold up the greatest over time.