- Hey, bakers.
John Kanell from Preppy Kitchen here.
And today we're making a lovely lemon layer cake.
This cake is so moist.
And on the inside, there's this dreamy mascarpone filling.
There's an also dreamy Swiss meringue buttercream
that's completely filled with lemon zest specks.
Okay. Let's get started.
I have 2/3 of a cup of milk,
and 1/3 of a cup of fresh lemon juice.
But don't worry, you're not gonna drink it.
It goes into the cake batter,
and all that acid will help leaven the cake,
but make the cake moist and delicious too.
Just stir it up.
You'll notice curdling happening immediately.
And just set it aside because we'll be adding it in
towards the end of our batter.
So we'll see you soon.
We're doing something a little bit different
with the sugar today.
I have a 1/4 and a cup,
No. (laughs)
I have a cup and 1/4 of granulated sugar here.
I'm gonna be adding the zest of a full lemon.
You can reduce this if you don't like
a super-zingy lemon cake.
This is a lot of zing.
Okay. So a giant lemon.
I'll leave a little bit on.
We're gonna pulse this,
pulse this, pulse this.
I want this to be totally incorporated with the sugar.
It's gonna be amazing.
Pop that top on.
Plug it in.
Now, pulse.
(mixer buzzing)
And by pulse, I mean just run the hell out of it
for a long time.
This is gonna get creamed up with 10 tablespoons of butter.
Start off by creaming your butter.
In you go, 10 tablespoons.
(mixer whirring)
You can use a paddle attachment for this,
but I'm not gonna do it today, sorry.
That looks fine.
Time to add in all this sugar.
We're gonna run this until it gets nice and fluffy.
So, just go and look at Instagram.
@preppykitchen.
(mixer whirring)
Looking for nice and fluffy.
Let's handle those dry ingredients real quick.
240 grams of all-purpose flour.
1-1/2 teaspoons of baking powder.
3/4 of a teaspoon of salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda.
Sift it out, and whisk it up.
Now, the only thing I have to do is add in my three eggs.
Where are you, eggs?
Hello?
(mixer whirring)
Switching to a scraping paddle attachment, egg number two.
Okay.
(mixer whirring)
All right.
That color is stunning and perfect for a lemon cake.
Now it's time to add in our dry mixture,
and our milk-lemon mixture in alternating batches.
You can eyeball it.
It's really about the mix.
It's not the end of the world.
Mix on low.
(mixer whirring)
Add in some of that milk.
(mixer whirring)
Let's add the rest of that milk in there.
This cake is very delicate.
It's really taking moisture to the edge of what is possible.
So, the batter is gonna be a delicate batter.
I'm warning you ahead of time.
Oh, I was doing so well.
(mixer whirring)
All righty.
Batter situation is all together.
You can butter and flour your pans if you'd like,
I'm just gonna be using some baking spray.
(can hissing)
One down.
It's so much easier.
(pans clanking)
You can use a round of parchment paper
if you're concerned about the whole cake situation.
releasing properly, but I think it'll be okay.
With my Fat Daddio six-inch pans,
these guys are about 500 grams each.
So, it's time to slip on my super-well used cake strips.
These are lifesavers for getting nice, flat cake layers.
You can click up here for my
"How to make flat cake layers" video,
and see how to make your own,
and how these work.
It's pretty cool.
These are gonna bake at 350 Fahrenheit, 177 Celsius
for about half an hour, or until the centers are set,
and the edge is pulling away from the pan.
To make the silky buttercream,
we're starting off with four whole egg whites.
I'm using four this time.
You can use five.
Add in 1-1/2 cups of granulated sugar
into a clean, medium-sized bowl,
along the the egg whites.
Mix it up real quick,
and then we're gonna part it onto a pot of simmering water.
The bowl cannot touch the water.
This is a steam bath or a bamory,
and we're going to be whisking this occasionally
while it warms up.
And then when it gets warm,
whisk continuously until it reaches 165 degrees Fahrenheit,
or your thumb and finger will rub it together,
and it feels very smooth and warm.
My sugar and egg mixture hit 165 Fahrenheit,
so I'm gonna pop it into this bowl carefully,
there we go.
We're gonna mix this up on medium-high, high,
until we get that nice beautiful, glossy peaks
and it reaches room temperature.
(mixer whirring)
I'm gonna add in a pinch of salt.
(mixer whirring)
And you can see it's whipping up real fast already.
We're gonna run this until it gets to room temperature
because that butter should not melt when we add it in.
Not that much of it.
All right, this is still just a hair warm,
but I'm adding in cooler room-temperature butter.
It doesn't yield to the touch as easily.
Martha Stewart says that works, so let's see.
So you should really add the butter in
a little piece at a time to let it incorporate.
So it can take a minute, but it's very relaxing,
I have to say.
I'm halfway through adding the butter,
and I want to show you that it does turn into
a bit of a delicious soup.
I'm gonna switch to a paddle attachment now,
just because it's gonna start stiffening up,
and I don't want it to whip too much air into it.
You want it to be nice and silky, not full of bubbles.
Those are annoying.
Now for the rest of the butter.
(mixer whirring)
All right, so I added all my butter in,
and I want you to see, it's not ready yet.
Look how soupy it is.
What are we gonna do?
You can either whip it,
or you can also leave it in the fridge
for a few minutes.
Five or so minutes, it'll stiffen up a bit,
and then you can come and whip it,
but you'll see the soupyness just goes away magically.
It's really nice.
So, have fun.
(mixer whirring)
I'm gonna follow my own advice,
and pop this into the fridge for a few minutes.
And while we do that, I'm gonna zest this lemon.
This is gonna be the lemon flavor that comes through
in the buttercream as well.
Ah.
So good.
These are pretty big pieces, though,
so I'm gonna mince them up.
Just so I don't have,
I just don't want big chunks in my buttercream.
I want them to be small pieces.
It'll also give you a smoother look, too.
You don't want to see raggedy chunks hanging out.
You don't want someone to say,
"I love your raggedy lemon cake. It's beautiful."
(knife banging)
Collect all this deliciousness.
Set this aside.
(cutting board scraping)
Back to the buttercream.
I'm gonna add my minced lemon zest in now.
Mincing the zest also means it's not gonna grab
onto the hook as much.
So, it'll be really well-mixed in there.
(mixer whirring)
This is the magic part.
Just literally two minutes in the fridge,
and now you can see it's beating up beautifully,
just like we want it to.
(mixer whirring)
See the difference?
It's not soupy anymore.
It has these beautiful, beautiful,
Swiss merengue buttercream edges to it.
Let's give it a taste.
(smacking lips) Hmm.
For the filling, I'm gonna use a mascarpone cheese.
If you don't know about it,
it is amazing.
We're gonna use eight ounces of this,
which is 226 grams.
Now I have a cup of confectioners sugar.
I'm gonna add almost the whole thing.
Just reserve a little bit.
A pinch of salt.
And I'm gonna zest a whole lemon into this.
Again, I want this to be a little zesty.
And you can skip this if you want this part of the cake
to be like the refreshing, has no lemon, part.
I'm not that person, so zest, zest, zest.
Now we're just gonna fold this in.
You could whip this up,
but I don't like whipping the mascarpone too much.
It can curdle.
A little bit of patience.
A little bit of exercise for my wrist.
I could eat this whole thing.
But we're gonna set it aside,
and whip some cream up now to fold that in.
To lighten up than mascarpone just a bit,
I'm gonna make some whipped cream.
I'm adding in a little bit less than a cup of
cold heavy cream into my stand mixer.
I'm gonna give it maybe a tablespoon and a half
of confectioners sugar.
I did not end up using the whole
confectioners sugar cup situation.
That was too much for me.
We're gonna whip this up.
(mixer whirring)
I've resisted using any vanilla in this cake so far.
But I will add a drop in for this filling.
(mixer whirring)
Whipping cream is so funny,
'cause the easiest thing to make is a Chantilly cream.
Oh, yeah, my favorite.
But it's so easy to screw up
because you cannot walk away from it.
So, in this hand, I have my beautiful, luscious,
thick mascarpone situation.
And here we have our whipped cream.
I don't want to use all of the whipped cream.
One, because I want to snack,
but two, I do not want this cake to start falling.
I want this to be thicker, but just a little bit lightened.
So I have to do this a bit at a time,
and see how it works out.
I thought it would be fun to make an hombre of yellow,
so let's split this silky
Swiss merengue buttercream up into a few batches.
I think of having three shades of lemon
and one of white will be just nice.
Now, should I use egg yellow, or lemon yellow?
They look almost exactly the same on top
but very different on the bottom.
I wonder.
I'll stick with lemon.
Let's whip this up and see what it looks like, color-wise.
Any merengue-based butter cream
takes its color very, very slowly.
(spoon slapping)
I mixed up three batches of yellow.
Deep, medium, light,
and then I have one that remains the same off-white color
for no food coloring.
This will be my hombre effect.
We'll see what the top will look like,
but I know what the side is gonna be.
An hombre.
Start off by piping that delicious creamy mascarpone filling
right onto the first cake layer.
You don't need to pipe it all the way to the edge, though,
because it will seep out a little bit if you do that.
Place the second layer on top,
add more of the mascarpone filling,
and then place the third layer on top.
I'm adding on my first layer of that yellow buttercream.
And it doesn't look so yellow because merengue-based
buttercream really take food coloring in a weird way.
We could talk about that later, if you want.
Add the lighter shades of yellow all the way to that
off-white natural color, with just the lemon zest in there.
Finish it up, and then start smoothing it out.
I'm using a bench scraper for the side.
And then an offset spatula for the top
you can smooth it out and then pull in as you turn.
Make sure to clean the tool off between each swipe.
You can go back and forth between the bench scraper
and the offset spatula, too.
Don't be afraid.
The buttercream will smooth out.
Once your buttercream's all smooth, it's time to pipe
some beautiful dollops on.
I use my favorite 869 tip and just pipe those dollops
nice and tall.
I thought about adding
some cute little lemon wedges in between,
but it seemed a little bit busy to me.
You can let me know what you think in the comments.
I've been dying to try this cake out in its entirety.
I have tried the cake.
I've tried the mascarpone filling,
and I've tried the frosting.
All delicious.
But what about them together?
Let's take a look and see.
Mmm.
The frosting is so crazy.
There is, as you saw, a good amount
of yellow food coloring in here.
But with Swiss merengue buttercream,
I don't know if you can see that?
Pure yellow.
Once you touch it, all the little microbubbles
of the gel food coloring burst.
But in the meantime, it's a very, very soft color you get.
So it's kind of crazy.
If you like this video, check out my strawberry cake video.
It is a moist, fluffy, delicious strawberry cake
with a little bit of lemon in the buttercream too,
because, why not?
And, what about just my cake compilation video?
All cakes.
No me.
No baking.
Just the satisfying parts.
I think you might love it.
Thanks so much for watching,
and I'll see you soon.