To add legitimacy to the competition I created a score sheet and suggested that our significant others be the judges. Admittedly, the score card was perhaps not that politically correct. But it amused me, and that's what counts.
Next, I googled away to try and find an appropriate recipe. The DG and I decided it had to be an iced lemon cake, not a glazed or loaf so it took some time to find an appropriate recipe. Finally I found a random lemon cake with lemon cream cheese icing. Sounded delish! Unfortunately, as you will see, going with a recipe from a random website was a mistake....
Easter Sunday Morning...
Being a good wife, I let the husband sleep in on Easter Sunday morning as the poor man had been getting up early all week between work and helping his brother with a patio door installation (hellooooo brownie points!). I got up with ze boy nice and early, fed and changed him (and washed my hands of course!) and began my lemon cake creation. As it was early, I had to bake while drinking the required cup of coffee:
During the process I had a pretty good audience. One member of the audience was there due to the fact that really, he couldnt go anywhere else and because he ADORES ME! The second was...well....just hoping something would drop on the floor and she could eat it.
Rob would have joined in except for his sleep in (hee hee!)...
Things were going well until I learned that I had to beat egg whites and add them carefully to the batter. I noticed that without the egg whites there just didn't seem to be much batter but pushed on anyways and put it into the pan for baking. As the cake baked, I noticed an egg smell seemed to be emanating from the oven - NOT a good sign. When I took the cake out of the oven it was also noticeably quite....small. Here is a video to share the experience...
Later I decided to taste the cake as I was quite concerned with the egg-y smell. The taste test proved me correct. I had created a lemony-cakey-frittata. If anyone wants the recipe, just let me know!
After a short break (laundry, feeding baby, coffee drinking etc) I decided to go back to the experts (Chatelaine and Canadian Living magazines) and found a recipe with a high rating. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough butter and what with the stores closed I had to call and beg the sister to drop some off on her way to a play date. And I mean beg. It was rather like the proverbial pound of flesh!
I ended up making a lemon cupcake recipe (doubled to make it a cake) with a lemon glaze and decided to use the lemon cream cheese icing from the previous recipe. Here is attempt #2 before it entered the oven:
And after - looking pretty good! And smelled pretty darn good as well....drool, drool, yum, yum.
So the decorating began. The husband agreed that the icing was to DIE for. But I had noticed that it was a bit too liquid-y for proper decorating. At any rate, I ploughed ahead:
And the final result!
So How Was It? I rate this cake a 4 out of 5. The cake was a bit on the heavy side but was quite good due to the use of the glaze. A lovely but not too lemon-y flavour. The cream cheese icing was so good I'm thinking I could eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day though next time I will definitely use more icing sugar to ensure the right consistency for decorating.
How Did it Score? In order to ensure that I had a good range of comments I had the hubby, the brother in law, the sister and the mother all score me. My father was exempt due to the fact that he doesn't like lemon cake and is therefore INSANE.
The cake rated a solid "very good" with a few "goods" and a few "OMG's!" The icing consistently ranked in the "OMG" territory. A definite keeper.
As for presentation - this was lacking. Due to the softness of the icing the top layer slid to the side during transportation. As a result, many felt that I was drunk while decorating or at least should have been. My cake subjects were a little more split on the question as to whether or not it reminded them of Jesus rising from the dead - in a good way of course.
Comments were as follows:
Re: Drinking: "2 beer only - looks like the leaning tower of Pisa"
"top layer sliding off"
Re: Asking for Cake Again: "I eat anything that is free." Ummm. Thanks?
Next cake to perfect? The cheese cake!!!!
