Hi, foodies in the Hive!
I hope you're all healthy and doing great π
Perhaps you already know it; I'm not into decoration. I care about texture and flavor first. Then I pray π My advantage is that I've been making this cake for a while. My family loves it although sometimes the camera doesn't. This one, I think, was pretty decent.
My whole family is crazy about chocolate, but on a lucky day, one of them will make me happy and ask for a lemon cake.
This is my son's favorite. I haven't prepared this cake for him in a while since he had to leave the country some years ago, as many Venezuelan youths. Now and then, he'll make a cake for his girfriend and roomies and will send me pictures of video call me to prepare it together. We make it work.
This one was for my eldest niece. I was happy when she asked for a lemon cake, finally. It's creamy, juicy, and tastes like a lemony dream.
Ingredients:
For the sponge cake:
- 4 cups all purpose flour
- 4 cups sugar
- 9 eggs (M)
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
For the lemon pastry cream:
- 1/2 can condensed milk
- 1/2 lt whole milk
- 1/2 lemon juice, freshly squeezed
- 1/4 cups sugar
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 cups egg yolks
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
For the cold lemon cream:
- 1/2 can condensed milk
- 1/2 can evaporated milk
- 1/4 cups lemon juice, freshly squeezed
I also used 150 ml lemon juice and 150 ml of evaporated milk to soak the cake, approx. And enough margarine to grease the baking pan.
I made my all time Favorite Sponge Cake
...which is ideal to absorb all the milk and lemon juice.
It's a butterless Genoise sponge cake.
To make it, I separated the whites from the yolks and beat the whites until almost stiff. Then I added the yolks, and the cinnamon and mixed well.
After that, I sifted the flour and added it little by little while folding it with my silicone pastry spoon.
When the mixture was completely homogeneous, I poured it into a rectangular pyrex (28 x 17cm) well greased with margarine.
I let it bake at 300 Β°F, with up and bottom heat in my small electric oven, during 30 minutes.
It doubled its size.
To unmold it, I waited 20 minutes for it to release a little heat and then flipped it over to another pyrex. The cake came off easily and fell out. I set out to soak it and stuff it into this new pyrex.
I needed three layers of cake. I used a long serrated knife. Then I let them soak in the lemon juice first while I prepared the rest.
I made a cold lemon cream which taste a lot like traditional lemon pie. It's really easy; I just hand whisked the condensed milk, evaporated milk, and lemnon juice in a bol. It soon became thick.
While the cold cream was in the fridge, I made the lemon pastry cream. Making it is also a realy simple process; I hand whisked all the ingredients except the egg yolks and vanilla essence, which I added in the end as soon as I removed the pot from the heat.
Once I was done with the creams, I finished soaking the sponge cake to fill it with the creams, the pastry cream still warm.
As you can see in the photos, it just about keeping an order: soak the cake with lemon juice and evaporated milk (I always mix it with a little lemon cream), then spread the cold lemon cream, then finish with the lemon pastry cream.
The last layer should be covered with more cold lemon cream.
I do it this way because since this cake is stored in the refrigerator or freezer, it is the cold lemon cream that stays creamy without cracking or drying out.
At that point, I put the cake in the freezer and went off to take care of other business.
I came back two hours later to finish the cake and go!
I put a lot of cream on top and decorated it the best aI could with lemon slices and lemon zest, like I always do.
It wasn't perfect, but it was a pleasure to look at; it was of good height, well soaked and with a generous dose of creamy pleasures. The cake was also light and soft.
My niece was delighted, and so was everyone else π.
All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY for all them.
Thank you so much for your visit :)
Banner by 
π€
π€