The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake Lemon Cake (Without the Particular Sadness)

So last night, with the help of my boyfriend, I undertook the challenge I mentioned in my previous post, which was remaking the lemon cake that I am currently reading about in the novel by Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. It’s a great book, I highly suggest it, but I also suggest making yourself some of this lemon cake while you read it. Because just reading this book made me hungry.

The book isn’t really about food. It’s about people. But since she learns about people through her food, it certainly talks about eating a lot. Which made me really want a slice of the lemon cake pictured on the cover:

I mean, who wouldn’t?

Most lemon cake recipes suggest using marshmallow cream icing or some kind of lemon or vanilla icing. Since I was trying to copy the cake from The Particular Sadness, I used chocolate fudge icing on top, but I couldn’t resist making some lemon curd for the middle. I’ll be honest, I was a little overwhelmed at the prospect of making the cake and the curd and the icing, so I cheated and just bought some chocolate fudge icing. Meh. I’m sure homemade would have been delicious, but I had my work cut out for me as it was. Here is what I used for the lemon cake and the lemon curd center:

(Adapted from Country Living and A Piece of Cake)

 What you need:

For the curd:

 Zest from two lemons

1 cup fresh lemon juice (from about 6 lemons)

1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

4 large eggs

6 large egg yolks (reserve whites for the cake)

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes and frozen

For the cake:

3 cups cake flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup butter, softened

2 1/2 cups sugar

5  eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup lemon juice

3/4 cup buttermilk

Start with the cake. Preheat the oven to 350 °F. Butter and flour 2 parchment-paper-lined identical cake pans. Set aside. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda together. Set aside. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy using a mixer set on medium speed. Add the eggs, one at a time. Beat in the vanilla extract. Reduce mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture by thirds, alternating with the lemon juice and buttermilk. Fun fact about my experience: we didn’t have a mixer, so I just used a whisk and mixed at the speeds I imagined it would do. This is probably a fail technique and if you have a mixer, use it. But honestly, the cake turned out fine. So, oh well. Divide the batter between the pans. Bake until golden, about 45 minutes.

While it is baking, go ahead and make the lemon curd, using the ingredients listed above. Measure 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice into a small bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over the top to soften. Work the lemon zest with your fingers into the sugar until the sugar is fragrant and evenly moistened with the oils from the zest. Heat the rest of the lemon juice, the lemon sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is hot but not bubbling. Whisk the whole eggs and egg yolks in a large bowl. Slowly whisk the lemon syrup into the eggs, then return the mixture to the saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook the curd, stirring constantly, until it’s thick enough to draw a trail through it with a spatula. Stir in the softened gelatin until completely dissolved. Set aside.

When the cake is done, make sure to let it cool! This is where we went a little wrong. It smelled so good and we really wanted it so we just started to decorate and put the custard in without letting it cool. The top layer literally fell apart on me! Luckily, icing proved to be really good cement and held it together, and it still tasted delicious. But if you want to make it look super pretty, you need to let it cool.

Take the first cake out of the pan (after it cooled!) and spread a thick layer of the curd on top of the cake. Then stick the second cake on top of that and ice over the whole thing with the chocolate icing. Best served with milk. : )

Here is my finished product. Look much like the book cover? Maybe not as pristine. But you’ll have to excuse me. I couldn’t help myself, and I took a bite of it before the picture was taken. Mmm.

  

I really enjoyed making (and eating) this cake so I’ll probably do this more often when I’m reading a good book. Hope you enjoy making this too! And, even if you don’t cook, I hope you enjoyed the food porn in this post, at least.