Lemon cake chaos! Layers collapse, icing spews, but can Jaci save her creation?
Photo by
Jaci Hicken
Jaci Hicken, our seasoned journalist and trained chef, shares her wealth of knowledge on growing, cooking and preserving homegrown produce. In this edition, we find out how Jaci saves a lemon yogurt cake from collapsing on itself.
Over the past five ‘Jaci can cook’ columns, we have cooked lemon marmalade, lemonade lemon jelly, lemon curd, lemonade lemon leather and baked a lemon yogurt cake.
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Now for the climax, assembling the layers of cake soaked in lemonade jelly, sandwiched with lemon curd and yogurt cream cheese icing, finished off with a garnish of lemonade leather.
But it didn’t go as planned.
The lemon yogurt cake was baked in two 20cm cake tins, resulting in two fluffy, golden-yellow cakes.
Each cake was sliced in half, giving me four layers.
The bottom layer went on a plate, spread with jelly, the icing piped around the edge, and the centre filled with lemon curd; everything was looking great.
As soon as the next layer of cake went on, the icing started to drip from the side.
It wasn’t enough to be worried about.
The next cake layer went on, jelly, icing and curd, topped with the third cake layer.
The drip from the first layer turned into a river, flowing freely out of the base of the cake, a mixture of icing and curd, with the middle layer not being much better.
But there was no turning back.
After all the effort of all the steps to get to this point, this cake was going to get finished.
More jelly, icing and curd, topped with the final layer of cake.
By now, under the weight of the layers, a mixture of icing and lemon curd was spewing out of the bottom layer, as the cake tried to topple over.
The cake needed to be saved.
First, to stop it from toppling over, five bamboo skewers were inserted to hold it together.
When icing a cake with a smooth buttercream finish or making a nude cake, you first need to apply a crumb coat of icing, and the easiest way to do this is on a frozen cake.
Without taking it off the plate, the entire cake was placed in the freezer, with the icing still spewing from it.
Once the cake had spent a night in the freezer, it was lifted off the plate and placed on a cake turning table, so it could spin around easier.
Using a plastic dough cutter, the icing and curd mixture was scraped around the outside of the cake.
The lemon yogurt cake was not my best work, but it still survived for afternoon tea.
Photo by
Jaci Hicken
The icing and curd mixture was still quite soft, but by now I was over this cake and just wanted it finished.
After all the steps, this lemon yogurt cake was not my best work, but it still survived for afternoon tea, not just at my house, but around the neighbourhood as well.
• Stay tuned for the next edition of Jaci can cook, when Jaci plans to start cleaning out the freezer in time to make room for this summer’s harvest.
If you have any ‘how to use up what’s in the freezer’ tips for Jaci, share them with her at jaci.hicken@mmg.com.au
