Today on The Stay At Home Chef
I'm showing you how to make Luscious Lemon Cake.
This lemon cake recipe is full of lemony goodness!
To start preheat an oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and lightly grease three 9 inch pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper.
Place 1 cup of softened salted butter into a mixing bowl, and you can see that's really soft,
and that's exactly what you want.
You'll also need 1 1/2 cups of plain granulated sugar.
We're gonna cream this together until it's nice and fluffy.
It takes about 1 minute of whipping with a hand mixer to get this mixture nice and creamy.
Set your butter mixture aside for a second and we're gonna work on our liquids.
You'll need 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk,
and to that you'll add in 1/4 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice,
1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract for a little lemony punch,
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract,
and 3 whole eggs,
and I measure this out in a 2 cup measuring cup so that I can then stir it all together and not dirty any extra dishes.
Then in another bowl we're gonna combine our dry ingredients.
You'll need 3 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour or you can use cake flour.
You'll also need 4 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.
Give this a quick stir then you'll want to spoon about 1/3 of the mixture from the flour into our butter mixture and mix this in until just combined.
Once that's mixed in you'll pour in half of the liquid ingredients and mix those in as well.
Once that's combined you'll add in another third of the flour mixture, mix that in yet again until just combined.
Then pour in the remainder of the liquid ingredients.
Mix those in and then you'll add in the remainder of the flour.
You'll end up with a thick cake batter and that's exactly what you're looking for.
This is not going to be a thin batter like a boxed cake mix.
Last you'll take a rubber spatula and you'll add in 1 tablespoon of freshly zested lemon,
and we'll fold this into our cake batter and it smells absolutely heavenly.
Then you'll want to divide your mixture amongst the three prepared pans.
Then I just gently press the batter out and spread it into the bottom of the pan.
Then we're gonna bake these in the 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
You really don't want to over bake this cake or it'll dry out.
While the cake is baking we'll go ahead and make our frosting.
You'll need 1 cup of softened salted butter along with 8 ounces of softened cream cheese.
Get that all in a bowl... if this will come out here...
then we'll whip this all together.
You want to mix this for about 1 minute slowly increasing your speed until everything is whipped together and it's nice and fluffy.
Then we're gonna add in 2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice,
1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract,
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and then give this a quick mix.
Last we're gonna add in the powdered sugar.
I like to add that in about 1 cup at a time and we're gonna add in 5 cups total.
Once you have all of your powdered sugar mixed in your frosting is done,
and since this is a lemon cake I like to add just a little bit of yellow gel food coloring to give it just a little yellow tint,
but of course that step is completely optional.
Then I like to transfer my frosting into a plastic piping bag to make it easier to frost my cake.
I'll end up using three of these piping bags, and an added bonus is that if I seal this off with a little twist tie here,
our frosting will not dry out while we wait for our cake to cool.
Once the cakes are done baking you'll want to transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
You do not want to try and frost a warm cake.
It'll be a disaster!
I have my first cake layer down.
You can always level off the top but I just go for it because it's mostly level.
Then I'm going to squeeze on some of my frosting for this layer into a nice little circle there and then use my offset spatula to even things out.
Then we'll put on our next layer of cake along with more frosting.
It looks like I'll have to switch to it my second bag since I have 3,
so we'll snip off the tip of that... You no need for a fancy tip on your piping bag today...
even that out and then place my final cake layer on top.
Check that things aren't leaning and then we'll frost the outside as well,
and I hate spending a ton of time making my cakes look super pretty,
so I have a trick I'm going to share with you here after we get the sides done.
I just gloop the frosting on,
and then I take the back of my offset spatula and tap it against the sides and top of the cake,
and it makes this cool little wave pattern to it, it actually looks pretty fancy.
It's always my go-to trick for cake decorating.
It covers up pretty much any mistake.
After this you'll just place your cake in the refrigerator until you're ready to serve.
Because of the cream cheese in this frosting the cake does need to be refrigerated when you're not eating it.
Simply pop it out of the fridge an hour before serving and you are ready to eat!
Thanks for watching!
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