Heavenly Cake - Woody's Lemon Luxury Layer Cake

ב''ה

It may have taken a whole Sunday to make, but it really was luxurious.

The Buttercream.

Mis en place:

We did a taste test of all the kosher white chocolate available to use. Good ol' Paskez (the Camille Bloch,) again, came out on top.

Straining the lemon curd. It took a looooong time to thicken. At least an hour. I was a bit zealous though about not letting it boil...

"double boiling" the white chocolate.

The Lemon Curd. Now cooled and separated.

The white chocolate custard. It is really time for me to get a thermometer. However, I just tried to use the same gauge that was given for the Lemon curd, to wait until it pools thickly, and it seemed to work pretty well.

Mix mix...

All done.

The Cake.

Mis en place:

Melt some chocolate, yet again!

Mix in the lemon curd.

Le Toaster. This time I lowered the rack but inverted the tray. This gave me medium height and equidistance from both heating elements. This was my mistake. I was led astray by Marcy Goldman's double cookie sheet trick that I had in mind. It had worked so well last time I used it making bread that I forgot that it did not work with the toaster tray for cakes...

I have to say I was a little wary of the 4 1/2 tspns of baking powder. I figured it must be because of the white chocolate added, to give it extra height or something. Still not sure why this recipe uses so much.

Ok, perhaps I should not have done this but after slaving away at the stove for so long I could not bake this cake in two shifts in the toaster. Hey, it worked for the pumpkin cake. Here toaster-oven, take that! I poured all the cake batter in the pan, shoved it in and hoped for the best.

I could tell after about half an hour or so that the cake was going to burn on top. I put some tin-foil as a shield. This was still not completely helping as the middle of the cake was still soupy. I then used a trick I learned in bread baking. I lowered the temperature, knowing that it would dry the cake somewhat, but at least it would be completely baked and stop burning. I figured it had so much gooey stuff in the batter, how dry could it get? Thank G-d, only a little. Next time, this cake gets baked flat on the lower rack setting. Nu, vos zol men ton?

Mazel Tov! It worked. There were a few moments of dread there. Worrying that I would have to make the cake a second time, what and the Chabad Rabbi at UCLA coming over for a visit and all (I just had to let him try the cake, even before I put the buttercream...)

Cut into three parts. It is interesting that the picture in the album does not seem to match the instructions for placing the buttercream. Dollops of Lemon Curd on top indeed! Needless to say I tried to match the layer of lemon curd in the picture.

The middle layer was really thin. I was not sure how to get it on top of the first layer. In the end I took a couple of pieces of paper and slid them under the middle layer as support. I then slid the middle layer onto the first. It was only slightly off center. ;)

This was the first cake that I attempted the parchment paper underneath to buttercream the cake with out the mess. It helped that the buttercream had a nice consistency.

Yum! This cake was really delicious. Now this is a buttercream. It was rich and flavorful and did not taste like butter at all.