Wednesday 15 August 2012

Vanilla Sponge with Lemon Buttercream and Raspberries


August 17th is the boyfriend's birthday.  He is getting two cakes this year, but neither is for the actual day.  He has one for Sunday when there is a family party, and then there is one for today to enjoy with his friends.  I've had Sunday's cake planned for a while and when I ran the idea past him, he loved the sound of it.  But Wednesday's cake was a problem.  I did not know what I should do and he didn't know either.  In the end, I've made almost a preliminary to Sunday's cake, since this one has some of the same flavours.  However, it only has a vanilla sponge whereas Sunday's will be lemon.

So this is a vanilla cake with a lemon buttercream running through the middle and on top.  Then there's raspberry jam in the middle also, and it's all finished off with raspberries for decoration.  Simple yet surprisingly effective.

For the most part I followed this recipe for the sponge, but got distracted part way through and didn't separate my eggs.  I didn't realise until after I'd beaten them and started adding them to the batter.  I really did not have much time today so I could not start over.  Thus it ended up being more like the fairy cake mixture I use, though everything was based on the weight of the eggs.  Thankfully it still rose quite well so I was happy.

The lemon buttercream is DIVINE!  At the weekend I spent a good while in the baking section of the supermarket contemplating whether getting lemon extract was worth it when lemon juice usually works fine for me.  But I did, since I thought I could use it to flavour Sunday's cake because I really wasn't convinced the zest would be enough.  I thought I'd try it in today's buttercream though and WOW!  It is just so good since obviously you've got none of the acidity of the lemon but all the flavour.  Seriously amazing.  I couldn't stop myself from licking the bowl once the cake was iced.

Since pretty much everything worked off previous recipes, there's not going to be one today.  The buttercream will be used in Sunday's cake so it's recipe will go there.  

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