Alright, so I know I've been a bit slow in getting another blog post out, even though I've had a number of requests to get things in gear. Thanks for the encouragement, everybody! So here we go... I made this cake for my sister's baby shower and it was definitely the favorite out of the desserts I made for the evening (runners-up were the blueberry cream cheese tart, apricot and cherry frangipane tart and puppy chow). The cake itself is made up of 2 - 8" layers of lemon cake that has a dense crumb vaguely similar to a pound cake. Even the cake haters at the party enjoyed this fruity cake, which was great. It's always nice to win people over!
So you start by making the cake layers. To do this, you will need two 8" cake pans (9" would work too). It's important to make sure you choose pans that have sides that go straight up. I bought some 9" pans a while ago and didn't realize that they were slightly slanted, and I get frustrated with them every time I try to make a layer cake because I have to fill in the angled gap with filling to make it look semi-normal. So do yourself a favor and use nice straight cake pans. I used this recipe for the cake layers:
Lemon Cake
2 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 large egg whites
2 Tbsp. fresh grated lemon zest
1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1 1/3 cups buttermilk
Begin by preheating the oven to 325F. Prepare your cake pans by spraying with cooking spray and placing a parchment circle in the bottom of each pan, and then spraying the parchment. If you don't have parchment circles, you should be okay with a nonstick cake pan and spray.
In a medium bowl, sift and/or whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Using a stand mixer or a large mixing bowl and hand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. A quick culinary school tip here- there are 2 levels of creaming; the first is to cream to a smooth paste, and the second is until light and fluffy. Smooth paste is common for cookie doughs, and light and fluffy is generally what you will see for a cake batter. It will take about 6-8 minutes on medium speed on your mixer to get it light and fluffy enough. This is an essential step to trap air in the fat which will help with your leavening later and make for a lighter cake.
Once your butter and sugar are sufficiently light and fluffy, add the eggs and egg whites one at a time (I just put them all in one container and pour in one yolk at a time with whatever white jumps in with it). Mix until completely combined, scraping down the sides occasionally to make sure it's well-mixed. Then add the lemon zest and juice and mix that in.
The final step is to mix in the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk. This makes for a more evenly-mixed batter than if you were to add all the flour or buttermilk at once. So just add about 1/3 of the flour mixture and 1/3 of the buttermilk mixture and mix until combined, repeating until you've added it all!
Scoop cake batter into prepared pans and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cakes stand in the pans for about 10 minutes, and then turn them out onto a wire rack or sheet of parchment. Let cool completely, and then wrap in 2 layers of plastic wrap and freeze for at least an hour, or until you need them (they can be made a week or so ahead if you like).
Now it's time to make the raspberry curd. Well, actually technically I made the raspberry curd first because it does have to refrigerate for a while. It can be made up to a week ahead as well. I used frozen raspberries for this because we needed to use them up out of our freezer to make room for this year's berries. You can certainly use fresh if you have them! Also, we used the leftover raspberry curd as a filling for crepes, and they were amazing! I'm sure you can come up with some other fun uses for them too.
Raspberry Curd
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 cups raspberries, fresh or frozen
5 large egg yolks, lightly beaten
3/4 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
2 Tbsp. cornstarch mixed with 1/3 c. water
2 to 3 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
Begin by melting the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Don't let it burn! Then add the raspberries, egg yolks, sugar and salt and cook, mashing and stirring frequently. You will need to cook it for about 15 minutes, until it thickens. It wasn't thickening enough for me, which is why I added the cornstarch slurry, which wasn't in the original recipe. Once the berry mixture is boiling, add the slurry of cornstarch (Note: I didn't measure this part, but just made a slurry with some cornstarch and whisked in a little water at a time until it looks like heavy cream). Boil everything for 2 minutes once you've added the cornstarch to help it make a strong bond. Then turn off heat and add the lemon juice.
Strain through a fine-mesh strainer over your storage container to remove the seeds. Put plastic wrap directly on top of the curd to keep a skin from forming, and put it in the refrigerator. Chill overnight.
I promise, now the hardest parts are done. All you have left to do is make the whipped cream. Part of it will get mixed in with the raspberry curd for the filling, and the rest will be used as a light whipped cream frosting. I really prefer it to buttercream, as it keeps the cake lighter and more fresh-tasting. When I made this for the baby shower, I stabilized the whipped cream with gelatin, but I didn't really like the effect the gelatin had. It made the whipped cream kind of rough, and so it was hard to get it to look nice on the outside of the cake. Next time I will leave out the gelatin and just be sure to whip the cream to stiff enough peaks to stay put on the cake, and I'd recommend you do the same.
Whip together until stiff peaks form:
4 c. heavy cream
1 c. powdered sugar
1 Tbsp. lemon zest
If you have some on hand, I think it would be really nice to add a tiny bit of limoncello (maybe 1 tsp. or so).
For the filling, put 1 cup of the raspberry curd in a bowl. Fold 1 cup of whipped cream into the curd in 1/3s. The first third you can use your whisk and be a little aggressive with it. After that, just use a spatula and a folding motion going under the center and up until it's combined.
Now it's time to build the cake! Okay, maybe this is another kind of hard part... Start by making sure your thawed cake layers are flat. To do this, use a long serrated knife to carefully slice a thin layer off the top. Look at it from all sides to make sure it's nice and even.
Place the first cake layer on your cake plate and cover it with fresh raspberries. Then use a piping bag to place your filling on top of the berries. If you don't have a piping bag, you can make one out of a ziploc bag. Otherwise, it would probably work better to spread the filling on first and then put the berries on top so that you're not trying to spread it over the berries. You might also try mixing the berries into the filling and then spreading it all on there.
Place the other cake layer on top and you're ready to frost! Start with the top of the cake, and spread on enough whipped cream to get a nice even layer. Then frost the sides using a flat spatula. I use my serrated bread knife to smooth out the top, which makes a simple ridge design on the top of the cake. You can use an icing comb to make ridges around it as well if you like. But, since I ended up covering most of this up anyways, you would be fine without all that.
Since the frosting looked so rough because of the gelatin, I decided to cover the top with fresh raspberries. I just washed them and stood them straight up all around the top of the cake in some semblance of order. Then I thought it needed something more, so I heated up some of our homemade raspberry jam and glazed the top with it.
I used a pastry brush to brush/sprinkle it on so it kind of pooled around the raspberries and dripped over the side.
I think it looks pretty that way, and a bit rustic as well. Don't be intimidated to take on this recipe, because it does come out really nice. You can play around with it, or even bake the cake in a 9x13 pan and then frost it with the raspberry filling and top it with raspberries. But this is definitely a nice summery cake that you will love!
A shortcake is essentially a biscuit, and as such you will be using 'The Biscuit Method.' Basically, that means you sift the dry ingredients together, work in some cold butter (should be about the size of macadamia nuts... that's the example they give you when you go to pastry school in Hawaii anyways), add your liquid, fold a couple of times and cut into desired shapes. 
It's helpful to cut your butter into pieces and then get those back into the fridge while you mix up your dry ingredients. Then when the dry ingredients are ready, just work in the butter quickly with your fingers. You don't want the butter to heat up too much, and you don't want to still have chunks of butter. The flour should look like it's had some fat rubbed into it, not just like flour with butter chunks throughout, kind of like this:
Then pour in the cold liquid and mix together quickly with a fork or bowl scraper, like this orange one that I have. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and gently fold it a couple of times, using enough flour so it doesn't stick to the counter. Then you can use a rolling pin or just press it into a rectangle with your fingers, about 3/4" thick. Cut the rectangle into 6 squares, like so.
