A Vision in Lemony Yellow

This cake is like a shopping list of dairy products: Sour Cream Cream Cheese Butter Cake. Actually it's just Cream Cheese Butter Cake but it does have a lot of sour cream in it. I predict 100% Alpha Baker satisfaction with this cake because it's dead easy, incredibly quick and absolutely delicious. The only change I'd recommend is to double the recipe. This recipe goes straight to the pool room*.

*check out the film The Castle if you're not familiar with this expression.

Although the icing is called buttercream, forget nightmares of never-ending instructions or *shudder* pouring hot syrup into whizzing egg whites. This is just a simple lemon curd with butter beaten into it. With an immersion blender!  Barely any washing up...except for the two bowls, saucepan and sieve (yes I even sieve things these days). The only difficulty in the whole process is standing over the lemon curd patiently stirring while it thickens on the stove (do NOT walk away but if you do, a bit of wild whisking can resurrect a curd on the brink). 

Oh, and it's absolutely delicious.

I used ordinary unbleached (Australian*) plain flour rather than cake flour (which Rose notes is critical to this recipe). I mentioned early on in the Alpha Bakers that I wasn't that keen on the texture and taste you get from cake flour. This could be because it reminds me of lower quality commercially baked goods (which is the only place you really find cake flour here and they always taste of preservative), or perhaps because cake flour isn't commonly used here by domestic cooks and I'm used to more 'robust' baking. Whatever it is, in this case my cake certainly does look robust, although it had a very soft texture. I'm not sure if it was the flour or actually just the baker :) but it would be interesting to try it again with cake flour. And maybe I will. Particularly since I have had (oops) some lemon curd icing left over.

*which, as bakers around the world will know, differs from flour in the UK and USA (and elsewhere) in many ways, including the protein levels.

Next week we're making Lemon Curd and Raspberry Pielets. I just looked at the recipe and it requires 18 egg yolks!! No wonder spellcheck keeps changing pielets to piglets.