Not So Lushious Lemony Lemon Curd Cake

So my first attempt at making a “pretty” cake didn’t turn out as I expected. Well, scratch that, actually, it did turn out as expected, it just didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. I wasn't able to achieve the pretty flower perfection that I saw in the March 2004 issue of Martha Stewart Living, but I'm not disappointed with what I got either. It became quite clear to me at 3 am Wednesday morning after I had finally had it, and was slapping lemon mascarpone icing into pastry bags with my hands (forgive me, I was tired and frustrated) that the Martha Stewart cake decorator person in the article was clearly NOT an amateur. I guess I knew that before getting into this but I chose to remain consciously naïve. I should just stick to bread baking, but I don’t wanna…so I'm not going to. I'll be the first to admit that spending an entire day, a day that went well past 3am to bake and decorate a cake is a little absurd, but having now had a taste of what I can do with the new decorating set, I was wildly satisfied with myself when I was done. I'm hooked, I want to decorate cakes, cupcakes cookies, doughnuts, you name it I'll decorate it. I'll even come to your house All I need to do is just slooow down the pace and really concentrate on learning technique and how to use the equipment properly, and then of coarse practice, practice, practice. I have to stop trying to run before I can even walk sometimes.

The Tools

I sometimes think I give the impression that I have this incredibly well stocked kitchen with all kinds of gadgets, or that I go out and buy gadgets for every project I decide to take on. The truth is, a lot of my stuff is either handed down to me, rescued from yard sales and flea markets, bought at Goodwill, (you would not believe what people consider junk, some of the stuff is brand new!) or, I buy it new only after having searched around for the best price and spending days torturing myself with the pros and cons of why I should or shouldn't buy it, and yes, sometimes there’s the occasional impulse purchase, like the cake decorating stuff. I also improvise a lot by making things so that I can get by, like using a cheese plate and cardboard for a cake turntable. I'm glad I finally have some decent stuff though, after having made makeshift cake turntables

just to decorate cakes, I'm glad I finally have a real one.

OMG! What a pleasure it was to just smooothly turn the wheel...no more herky jerky movements or holding my breath while trying to keep the cardboard from slipping off the stand! This turntable is marble, and looks fancy, but it wasn't all that expensive, less than $20 at NY Cake Supplies.

For the longest time I've used this serrated icing knife to ice cakes. It was handed down to me by an old roommate along with a box of other kitchen stuff when we were moving out of the dorms after our college graduation (circa 1989) ACK, 1989, don't tell anyone!. It has always been kind of hard to use, the serrated edge always made serrated scrape marks on the cake, which was fine sometimes, but I didn't always want that. I don't even think this is supposed to be an icing knife.

Over the years the idea came to me to use some of my extra but never used art supplies in the kitchen (art school has its uses, right Cathy!) like these little palette knives

and these brushes.

The brushes have always been a great addition to the kitchen tools, I’ve used them in much the same way you use a pastry brush, but the palette knives along with that serrated thing have always been hard to use for icing big cakes. They were great for cupcakes, or other small delectable treats, like icing black and white cookies but not handy at all for the big jobs. Finally, after all these years, I bought a real icing knife. I can't even begin to explain what a pleasure it was using this, and in tandem with the turntable, well let's just say....rarrrr!

The Cake

The recipe I used for the cake; a Lemon Layer Cake With Lemon Curd And Mascarpone came from the old standby site, Epicurious. Lately I've been having more hits than misses with them and I'm beginning to wonder why I keep going back. Speaking of recipe hits and misses I recently baked some French baguettes from a Martha Stewart cookbook that were horrible. I've had problems with Martha recipes before and have often wondered what goes on in her test kitchens because what she shows on TV and in her magazines often doesn’t translate well for me at home. The bread came out dense and flavorless and not at all like the thick crusty airy bread I was hoping for. I've been watching Food Network quite a bit since going on maternity leave and the other day I noticed that Martha actually scoops her flour from the container rather than using the "scoop and tap method" that I've always read was much better with baking. I started wondering if maybe that was part of the problem with some of Martha's recipes...are the measurements just inaccurate, especially with her baking? ANYWAY, that's another discussion for another time I guess. SO! The Lemon Layer Cake with Lemon Curd and Mascarpone turned out to be just okay, I was pretty let down. I spent a lot of time and money on ingredients for this cake, I thought that with all its fancy-ish ingredients (mascarpone, ALOT of mascarpone) it would be a rich, decadent treat laced with tart lemon flavor. The lemon curd was truly yummy, the lemon syrup was good, (like lemonade, but sweeter) the cake, which I thought was similar to the génoise I made for the Gateau Citron a while back, was good by itself, but the mascarpone icing did nothing for me OR the cake. It was thick and left a slick layer of greasy film in my mouth that was not pleasant, it lacked any real distinguishing flavor, it was more like lemon flavored pomade, okay, maybe not that bad or greasy but it would have been nice if there was some sort of other contrasting taste going on. In this case, cream cheese probably would have worked just as well and would have been less costly. To be fair, I now have a cold , so my taste buds may have been going then, but I doubt it, because Tom had similar gripes with the cake, adding that the overall lemon experience was too overpowering and the taste of the actual cake was lost. We love lemon here at MH5 but this was a bit much. I'm not going to reproduce the recipe here because I'd hate to post something I thought was mediocre, but here is the link just in case you'd like to proceed with it at your own risk.

The Decorating

This was by far the most fun part, except for getting the icing into the pastry bags, that wasn’t so fun. I bought the wrong size and they were kind of small so I had trouble getting my measuring cup into them. I will be getting bigger bags. I layered the cake as per the instructions from the Epicurious recipe;

"Place 1 cake layer, flat side up, on platter. Brush with 1/4 of syrup. Spread 1/4 cup lemon curd over, then 1 cup lemon-mascarpone filling. Top with second cake layer; brush with 1/4 of syrup and spread with 1/4 cup lemon curd and 1 cup lemon-mascarpone filling. Repeat with third cake layer, syrup, lemon curd, and filling. Top with fourth cake layer. Brush with remaining syrup, then spread remaining lemon curd over."

I spooned 2 cups of mascarpone icing over the top of the cake and using my spiffy new icing knife I spread the icing with the ease and grace of a ballerina, turning the cake ever so gently on my fabulous new turntable. What a pleasure to have the right tools. So, with the icing on the cake and me feeling sassy because it is after all, the smoothest cake I've iced to date, I decided to get a little fancy and make ridges using this little toy. aren't I just sparkly?

I colored some icing green, and then using the smallest star tip I piped a border around the cake

I then colored some icing pink and carefully following the directions in the magazine, I tried making sweet pea icing flowers.

Hoo boy, I wasn't getting anything closely resembling the picture in the magazine so I scraped the flowers off and tried again. No go. I scraped again and tried, nope, still not happening. One more time, patching the holes I was making in the mascarpone with my small palette knife as I went. I heard the baby stirring at one point so I scraped one last time, hoping to finish up before the Little Miss needed another feeding, (I think hurrying at this point is what started to do me in). I got the idea to pipe small flowers in between the green stars on the border. That was neat looking, I liked that, so I tried it with some icing I had colored yellow, another row, next to the pink, and hated it. I scraped that off to try again, but by this time the mascarpone icing was getting warm and hard to pipe, it felt like 600 degrees in my kitchen, and I really wanted to go to bed, so I grabbed fistfuls (literally) of the icing and just dumped it into the bag, (I was tired of wrestling with the measuring cup) I fitted a big star tip on the bag and piped the rest of the icing onto the top of the cake just like you see in the very first picture up at the top of this post. I felt a little defeated by the lack of perseverance on my part but it was 3am, what was I thinking? I cleaned up, put the cake in the fridge and went to bed. Becoming the Picasso of cake decorating would have to wait for another day.

Final Thoughts

It was great fun, the right tools made it a pleasure but baking and decorating a cake all in one day was/is a little much, especially now, with a baby to care for and me being on the verge of going back to work on Monday. I may have to make shortcuts in the future, like using cake mixes or finding an easier less frou, frou recipe so that I can practice the decorating without fuss and bother. For the near future, I see myself making big batches of royal icing, which holds up much better and dries to a hardened state, a good icing for practicing flowers and designs on parchment paper to get the hang of things. Can’t wait.

Written by Deb on April 2, 2004 12:04 AM