almond layer cake with lemon curd buttercream

[cimorene]

The cake in this recipe is delicious. It could be very successful muffins, like without any icing.

Wax increased the amount of lemon in the frosting to about three times the recipe so it is noticeably tart, but basically it's just way too much butter and sugar for the amount of cake involved. It's fine if I leave most of the frosting scraped off on the plate. But the lemony quality of the strong lemon curd is actually lovely; it's the underlying buttercream that's wrong, so another type of icing with lemon curd might be great.

Basically Wax concluded that she forgot American cake recipes typically have about four times as much frosting as the cakes can hold as well as too much sugar in the frosting itself. I usually have more tolerance for sweeter dessert than she does, but in this case the cake is SO good that I couldn't stand to let it be drowned in excessive buttercream.

Comments

[zana16]

Did you mean to link to a recipe? (It sounds delicious!)

[cimorene]

No! I don't have it - it's all her department, her hobby, and she modified it. But also it's not perfected because of the frosting issue.

[isilya]

The cake sounds delicious! I would be tempted to do plain lemon curd, raspberries, and some thick dollop cream for serving.

If Wax has attempted an Italian Meringue Buttercream before, it's a great combination with lemon curd--it's very light and silky without being too sweet (and you can make it less sweet to a certain degree before the structural integrity is lost).

Alternatively Nigella Lawson pioneered topping the cake layers with meringue, inverting the layers, and sandwiching together with plain lemon curd and cream--it's sensational.

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/lemon-meringue-cake

[cimorene]

I can't remember if she's made Italian meringue buttercream, but I know she knows about it. Anyway, I will refer this to her#

[isilya]

In fact I think when I used lemon curd in the Italian meringue buttercream I just did a straight substitute of the butter for the cold lemon curd entirely. So I guess it was actually just whipping lemon curd into Italian meringue, no buttercream involved.

[cimorene]

Oooooh! Wax watched the Nigella video and read about it last night. I thought she would comment, but I guess not...

[extraarcha]

I'm sitting here scratching my head!
Leave frosting on the plate?
Huh?
The whole point of 'cake' is an open excuse to lather on frosting. (Chocolate preferred)

Viva la SUGAR!
(ymmv)

{:~{)>

[cimorene]

When you're making it yourself you could just make the frosting and eat that, then. Or just make a cake with way more sugar in it.