Cake: 2 ½ cups flour ½ teaspoon of salt 2 ½ teaspoons baking powder 1 ¼ cup milk 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 2 teaspoons lemon juice Zest of two lemons 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter softened 1 ½ cups sugar 4 eggs Buttercream: 1 cup unsalted butter softened 4 cups powder sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract ¼ teaspoon salt ½ lemon curd Lemon Syrup: ½ cup sugar ½ cup water Lemon slices | Prep Time: 25 minutes Cook Time: 25 minutes to cook Lemon Syrup Bake Time: 30 to 35 minutes Assembly Time: 10-15 minutes |
First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 8 inch or 9 inch round pans. Then start with the batter. Mix together flour, salt, and baking powder. In a separate bowl whisk milk, vegetable oil, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Cream butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Then add the eggs one at a time. Finally, add flour mixture and milk mixture to butter and sugar, alternating between the mixtures, starting and ending with the flour. Blend until everything is combined.
Now comes the fun part! Separate the batter into small separate bowls. I choose six colors, so I used six bowls. But feel free to choose your own amount of colors. Once the batter is divided, add a food color gel until you reach your desired color. I used Wilton Food Color Gel. I find gel to be more pigmented then food dye and because it is more pigmented, you can use less than regular liquid food dye. If you use too much liquid food dye, it can water-down the batter.
Once your batter is dyed, you can begin layering your batter into the pans. I’ve never done this before, so I added the batter in each pan differently. The first pan I added all the red batter to the pan and tried to spread it to the edge. Then I added the next color directly in the middle and tried to spread that out, and so on and so forth. Then I took a popsicle stick and dragged the batter around to mix the colors. Do not over mix or else you will create one “muddy” looking cake with no distinctive color differences. This first method proved to be difficult. I think the batter was too thick for this approach. It didn’t poor or spread easily.
The second method was taking each color and just scooping it into the pan in random groupings. I also used a popsicle stick to mix the colors. Because of the batter consistency, this was a little easier.
Once the batter is distributed in the pans place them in the oven and bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes. Place a toothpick in the center of the cake; if it comes out clean, it’s cooked. Let the pans sit for 10-15 minutes. Then flip the cakes onto cooling racks to finish cooling. While the cake is baking, you can start on the Lemon Syrup. In pan with a high edge, add water and sugar and bring to boil. Once the sugar is dissolved, add lemon slices. Regularly stir lemon mixture for 25 minutes. With a slotted spoon, take out lemons and place on wax paper. What’s left is a thick lemon syrup. You can use the candied lemons as decorations for your cake but I choose not to for this occasion. Save the lemons for a treat; you can eat the lemons, skin and all. |
Once the cake and lemon syrup are cooled, you can begin to assembly the cake. Place the first cake on the cake pedestal. If the cake is not level, use a serrated knife and trim the top of the cake. Poke holes in the top of the cake with a toothpick and spoon 2-3 tablespoons of the lemon syrup over the top. Do not spoon too much or the cake will become wet and soggy. Next, put a layer of buttercream on top of the syrup. For the next layer make sure it is level and then place it on top of the buttercream layer upside-down. Putting the layer upside-down will prevent crumbs from getting into the frosting when icing the top of the cake. Poke holes in the top of the cake and spoon on more lemon syrup. Then spread a thin layer of buttercream on the whole cake and place in the fridge. This is a crumb coat. There can and will be crumbs in this layer of frosting. But chilling it in the fridge will harden it. The next step is to put the final layer of frosting on the cake; the crumb coat will allow this layer to be smooth and crumb free. I decided to create a decorative design on the outside of the cake. I took the leftover buttercream, divided it into three bowls, and used the gel food dye again. I then put each color into piping bags using a round tip. I started from the center of the cake and swirled in a circle outward. I did the same with the other two colors. Then I used a toothpick and dragged it from the center out and from the outside in, alternating. For the edge, I circled each color around and used a toothpick again dragging up and down, alternating again.
This cake was a lot of work but it was worth it! It looked beautiful and tasted great. Everybody was surprised when I cut the cake. Definitely a show-stopper!
- www.mycakeschool.com/recipes/lemon-scratch-recipe/
- www.marthastewart.com/632498/lemon-cake