Lemon and Blueberry Cake

25th March 2016

A friend made this cake a couple of times recently and it has been quite possibly one of the best cakes I've had in a long time. So I made it for my parents for Easter while I was home. It tasted great but didn't have quite the aesthetic appearance that the others did. Here's the recipe for reference.

Baking-wise, it was a fairly simple sponge cake recipe. Softened butter was creamed with white and brown sugar, then the beaten eggs and vanilla were mixed in. The dry ingredients - flour, baking powder and salt - were weighed and sieved separately (finally get to use a sieve!) and then mixed in to make a stiff cake batter. A very stiff one actually.

Next, I zested and juiced three lemons and mixed these into the batter along with the milk. The blueberries were tossed with a spoonful of flour and stirred into the mixture to prevent them from sinking.

This mixture was more than enough to fill three sandwich tins, and it probably could have done four smaller ones at a push! They were baked for approximately 25 minutes and they came out quite pale still, but cooked through. I left this over night to properly cool.

The frosting was a mixture of cream cheese and butter beaten together and then icing sugar. The mistake I made was not beating the butter enough, or letting it soften enough. Once I started spread it over the cake layers it was apparent that there were still little lumps of butter still in there and it wasn't smooth. Nor did it have the nice yellowish colour that my friend had! I also left the greaseproof paper on the middle later and had to deconstruct things a little and make a huge mess.

Overall it tasted great but looked an absolute nightmare! I saved some of the blueberries to decorate the top which hid some of the travesty. I had to put this in the fridge for a few hours because the icing was just running off it like a waterfall. That seems to happen with all the frostings I make, and this time I even omitted the cream ingredient which would have made it runnier! 

Once we cut into it, it looked pretty good for the first three-tier cake I've ever made. You can kinda see where I had to slide out the paper as there's less frosting between two of the layers. My friend added lemon curd in the layers too which I regret not doing. Next time!