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This deliciously zesty Lemon Cake is everything you will need to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.
Street Party or Party in the garden, this will be the centrepiece to wow your guests.
Besides the flavor and texture, this cake is loved because of its ease. Very basic ingredients including butter, sugar, eggs, lemon, and flour. Between the cake and frosting, you’ll need 4 lemons. Both the juice and zest. If you plan to make your own lemon curd you will need double the amount of lemons.
My Lemon Curd recipe can be found here.
Store bought lemon curd is perfectly acceptable but I would choose the more expensive ones as they are easier to spread, and just taste better!
How To Make The Cake
This cake is made in the same way as Victoria Sponge cake. Either the all-in-one method using a free standing mixer or electric whisk, or by hand in a bowl.
The main difference between this and Victoria sponge (apart from the obvious!) is that it uses more flour. The extra flour is needed to compensate for the juice of the lemons. If you try to make this cake without adding the extra flour it will remain flat and be quite flimsy when you try to handle it. It will also look like it has separated : curdled, instead of thick and creamy.
This cake is best baked the day before you are going to decorate it so that the lemon drizzle has time to soak into the lemon sponge, making it more lemony. Make the curd the day before too If making it).
I baked this cake in 2 deep 8" round baking tins and then sliced each cake in half. If you don't want to do the slicing part then use 4 shallow 8" baking tins instead, then simply sandwich them together.
An important note about Lemons.
When choosing them try to find lemons without blemishes on the skin, or any green. The zest is used in the cake and the buttercream so green bits will look like mold, and no-one wants to eat a cake that looks like it has moldy bits.
How to Decorate The Cake
Buttercream is flavoured with lemon oil. Buy this in any supermarket from their baking section. I have switched this a number of years ago. I used to use the zest of a lemon but the pieces the grater produced were too long and would keep clogging up the piping nozzle. I would have to stop several times to unblock it. it drove me mad!
You can use the zest with the oil if you aren't going to pipe swirls on the top to decorate.
I bought ready made sugar flowers to give the cake that spring look. And because it's the Jubilee, go mad with the Union Jacks and spray the cake with edible gold glitter.
Additional Jubilee Street Party Bakes:
Need to bake for a crowd with no time to make a big layer cake?
Use the same recipe and make a traybake instead. The recipe will make 2 trays of lemon cake using a small roasting tin and cutting the baking time down to 30 minutes.
Cupcakes are always a good idea.
This recipe will make approx 24-30 cupcakes. Use an apple corer to scoop out a small amonut from each cupcake, then add a tsp of lemon curd in the hole created.
Cupcakes take 23-25 minutes to bake.
