Perfect Party Cake

Delicious!

I love cake, and I love to "build cakes", but my icing does not always turn out. This one did! This recipe takes a little bit of work...and time, but it is so worth it. It has a very light taste and is not overly sweet. It does call for lemon, but it is not really a super lemony cake. I made it on a night when one particular friend who doesn't care for sweet desserts came over and he loved it! I originally saw the recipe on this blog who got the recipe from this one. I changed the recipe a little to fit into my penny pinching budget. I ended up spending about $6 to buy ingredients that I didn't have on hand (lemon extract, evap milk, and jam). If you can find imitation lemon extract, you could make this for much less.
Here is the changed recipe (for Dorie Greenspan's original, click on the second link above)

Cake
2 1/4 c flour
1 Tbl baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup plus 1/8 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup plus 1/8 cup water
4 large egg whites
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp lemon extract
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 tsp lemon extract
Icing
1 c sugar
4 large egg whites
3 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 c lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla
Filling
2/3 c seedless preserves (I used black currant from Aldi-yum!)

• Preheat oven to 350*
• Grease 2 9x2 round cake pans. Line bottom with wax paper.
• Sift flour, baking powder, and salt.
• Whisk milk, water, and egg whites.
• Whisk sugar and 1 tsp lemon extract. Add butter and beat at Medium speed for 3 minutes until light.
  
• Beat in 1/2 tsp lemon extract. 
• Still at Medium speed, add 1/3 of flour mixture. Beat in 1/2 milk mixture. Repeat.
• Beat 2 minutes until well mixed.
• Put into pans. Smooth tops.
• Bake 25 minutes until well risen and toothpick comes out clean.
• Cool 5 minutes in pan on rack. Then take out of pan and cool right side up.

• Put sugar and egg whites in a metal bowl. Place bowl over a saucepan of simmer water and whisk constantly. Keep over heat about 3 minutes or until sugar is dissolved and just starts to thicken.
• Remove from heat. Whisk on Medium until it cools-about 5 minutes.
• Switch mixer to regular blade (not the whisk) and add butter one stick at a time until smooth. 
• Beat at Medium-high speed until thick and smooth- 6-10 minutes
• On Medium, beat in lemon juice and vanilla.
• Should be a smooth, white buttercream....Mine almost looked like whipped cream

• Remove wax paper from the bottom of the cooled cakes.
• Slice each cake in half, so you have 4 cakes.
• Place one cake on a cake plate, and surround the cake with wax paper to collect icing droppings as you work.
• Spread 1/3 preserves and a thin lay of icing over the bottom cake. Repeat two times. (So you should have cake, jam, icing, cake, jam, icing, cake jam, icing, cake, icing)
• Decorate as desired. I just made a swirly messy pattern since I couldn't get it to be perfectly smooth.
• Remove wax paper from the cake plate.

linked toTheme Bakers Sunday: Cakes

and



Sweet Treats Thursday