Boss Lemon Cake

Lemon Cake. He said he wanted lemon cake. Lemon is not chocolate therefore, who cares about it. I tried to offer lemon bars... but he wasn't budging. It had to be lemon cake. Really, really lemony cake. I've gotten an F- on my previous attempts because they were not lemony enough. So I needed the most lemony cake ever. With cream cheese frosting.

This is not chocolate cake.

I ask you, friends, do you know how hard it is to find a lemon layer cake recipe that does not start with "a box of lemon cake mix?"  Who would have thought it would have been so difficult.

Zero chocolate here.

So I made it up. Yep. I used a couple of different recipes and cut-n-pasted the ingredients until it looked "about right." I used the recipes from here and also here and a bit of this too.  The problem is that sometimes I make stuff up - but then I forget what I did so I'm going to write this one down. This is a keeper.

Boss Lemon Cake

Cake:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature

2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

For assembly:
Lemon curd

Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting:
8 oz of cream cheese, softened
8 oz of butter softened
3 or 4 cups (??) of powdered sugar
A couple tablespoons, or glugs, of lemon juice
Splash of vanilla

How to:
Cream together the sugar and butter. Add the eggs one at a time and beat in well. In a different bowl mix together the baking powder, soda, salt and flour. Mix dry ingredients and the buttermilk into the sugar and eggs - but alternate the flour mix and the buttermilk. About half way thru I added the lemon juice.

Pour into prepared pans - 2 nine inch rounds, greased and floured, and bake at 350* for about 25 mins or until toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in pans for 10 minutes then turn out on cooling rack until entirely cooled.

You guys know how to make frosting, right? Cream together the cream cheese and the butter then add the lemon juice and vanilla... then add the powdered sugar a little at a time until it looks about right - light and fluffy and is delicious.

Put first half of cake on a big plate. Spread the top with lemon curd. Add a layer of frosting on top of the curd. Top with second half of cake. Frost the rest of the cake.

To make sure that I had the creamiest, lemoniest cake possible I made the butter from cream. This was great because I made the butter just before I started this cake - so the butter was nice and soft. How easy is that? No waiting around for the butter to soften - or trying to cheat by putting it in the microwave. I also made the buttermilk by adding a couple tablespoons of lemon juice to whole milk and letting it set.

I have bad pictures because the cake was so good I couldn't wait for good lighting.

Then I got the best lemon juice I could find. Did I squeeze it from real lemons? No - are you kidding have you seen the prices lately?  Plus using the lemon zest freaks me out, man, who knows where those lemons have been.... so I didn't do any of that fancy stuff.  Did I make the lemon curd? Nope I just got some from the store too.

So how did it turn out? Lemony! The Big Man declared it as good as what his grandma used to make and everyone was happy. I even liked it.... despite the dire lack of chocolate. And it turns out lemon cake is a breakfast food.

We are calling this lemon cake a raging success. It was totally boss.

Happy Monday everyone! Are you a cake boss? Do you make up your own recipes?


Editor's Note: More Amazon affiliate links? Yep. All y'all are gonna ask which lemon juice and what curd so here they are. But for heaven's sakes, they are super duper expensive to order online! So just go and get this stuff from the store. But in the mean time... if you already need something from Amazon just go there by clicking one of these links. Remember this gets me a tiny percentage of the sale. If you like this blog, or if I've helped you at all in your farming efforts, just make a purchase from Amazon from one of the links, my store, or the black Amazon search box on the right side of this page. You can buy anything - even lemon curd for three times the store price! Thanks everyone!