My mother's birthday is at the beginning of June and she asks for the same kind of cake each year...lemon. I usually bake her a lazy cake by dropping the filling into the raw batter and swirling it around and then baking it and icing it. She reports each year that the cake is not lemony enough. I don't like cakes with any amount of lemon, so I could care less if it is light on the lemon or heavy.
This year I decided I would put forth a little more effort and channel my friend Kasey of
Kakes by Klassic, who makes all kinds of awesome kakes. My cake was not even close to awesome, so I cannot call it a kake. :) Anyway, I made the huge decision that I would bake a plain yellow cake, then actually cut it in half, fill it and then ice it. Huge step for Ema and her creative baking skills. I am sure I would never have tried this if it wasn't for Kasey and all her awesome kakes. You should really check her out...she rocks!
Now back to my mediocre cake. I baked my boring yellow cake from a mix, since I am that good, on a Thursday night and let it cool on the counter over night. The next morning I
had the genius idea remembered a tip from the cake shows on TLC that cutting of a cake is much easier when the cake is cold, so I put my cake in the fridge. Friday afternoon I got it out, said a prayer and began slicing it in half.
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Before slicing and during prayer |
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After successfully completing step one...phew |
After slicing the cake in half, I was feeling pretty confident that I was not going to be presenting my mother crumbled cake with lemon and icing so that was a great feeling. I figured I could salvage something cake like even if I split the top half while putting it back in place. On to the filling. Note my very fancy foil covered cutting board. Stylish!
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Lemony...yuck! I mean yum! |
Flipping the top back on the cake was easy. Woohoo for small victories.
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Together again |
Once I had the top layer of cake back in place, I decided that the top was a little rounded and since I was rocking the cake hacking I might as well trim the top to make it more flat. The bonus part of this was I got to taste the cake without any lemony evilness, which was delicious. The bad part...I found out exactly why the cake shows call that first layer of icing below the fondant a crumb coating. That's right...crumbs all up in my icing. And the extra special ability to see the places on the top of the cake that were cut through the icing. Cream cheese icing is apparently very easy to see through.
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See how the cake is lighter in the middle? Nice. |
No, I didn't write anything on the top of it...I just added some candles. I had already put forth all my daring creativity with the actual filling of the cake. The great news is that my mom loved it and didn't have to add extra lemon filling to her slice. Awesome.