We’re making this cake for someone’s birthday, but the fruity flavours make it perfect for any summery celebration! (we really can find any celebratory excuse for cake, such as “it’s a wednesday”).
When tasked with making a cake for someone who “isn’t much of a chocolate person” (we still question whether people that say this really mean it) we felt that fruity was the way to go. And being as its summer, lemon and raspberry seemed the perfect mix of fruity, sweet and a light. It went down a treat with the birthday party attendees so we’ll take that as their stamp of approval.
We decided to pipe our icing in between each layer, not only does this help you get an even layer of buttercream, it also meant we could alternate lemon and raspberry so when we cut into the cake you see cute little stripes of pink and yellow between each sponge! On top we just spread on a good layer of the 2 buttercreams marbled together as we decided to decorate with mini meringue kisses and fondant flowers. How you choose to decorate is really up to you but we really liked the effect of the vanilla buttercream piped around the edge of each layer with the meringues on top!
First of all we started by making a quick batch of meringue and piped them into tiny kisses with yellow and pink food colouring in the piping bags to create candy stripes, and left them aside for later to decorate the top of the cake.
We used a large round piping nozzle to pipe little peaks around the edge of 3 of the layers of cake (this is 4 layers remember), then in the centre of the cakes we used a rotating cake stand to quickly pipe a circle, alternating lemon and raspberry buttercreams we flavoured with lemon curd and raspberry jam (also gave it a great colouring). Using a cake stand like this all we needed to do was keep our piping hand still and spin the cake stand, rather than attempting to pipe a round circle – it was so quick and easy.
- 300g butter, softened
- 350g caster sugar
- 350g self raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 3 tbsp milk
- 5 eggs
- zest 1 lemon
- 250g butter, softened
- 750g icing sugar
- 2-3 tbsp milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 5 tbsp lemon curd
- 5 tbsp raspberry jam
- Using either a larger bowl and an electric whisk or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream together on a medium-high speed the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add in 2 of the eggs and mix at a medium speed until fully incorporated, repeat for the remaining eggs. Adding in the lemon zest with the final 2.
- Once fully mixed begin to add in the flour about a quarter at a time mixing on a low speed until incorparted, halfway through add in your milk.
- Once all the flour increase the speed of your mixer to medium-high and whisk for 30sec-1min until everything is well incorporated.
- Spoon into greased and lined tins eqaully, we split our into 3 but you can do 2 bigger layers or 4 thinner ones if you like.
- Bake at 180 degrees for about 20mins until light brown in colour and a skewer comes out of the sponge clean.
- Place the butter into your bowl and whisk for about a minute, once slightly lighter in colour begin adding in the icing sugar a small amount at a time and whixking till incorporated (to prevent any huge icing sugar dust clouds!!)
- Once half the icing sugar had been added, pour in the milk and vanilla and continue with adding the sugar.
- After you’ve added in all of the sugar, whisk on a medium-high speed for 1-2 mins to get a light and fluffy butter cream texture.
- Then divide into 3 bowls, we want about 1/8 to 1/4 kept plain and the remaining split in half. Add your lemon curd to one and raspberry jam to the other of the 2 larger portions. Mix until thoroughly combined and an even colour, if you want a more rippled effect don’t mix so much!.
- We chose to pipe plain vanilla buttercream around the edge of each layer and then circular rings of alternating lemon and raspberry becasue we think it creates a nice mixture of the flavours and a pretty cross-section when you cut a slice. But you could also have a lemon layer, a raspberry layer and the vanilla on top. Whatever you think works the best for you!
Apologies for the terrible quality of these 2 photos but, at a garden party on a hot July afternoon, there’s only so much you can do with an iPhone camera!! However we really wanted to show you what the inside of the cake looked like with the piped rings of the 2 buttercreams inbetween the layers, the came out just as we’d hoped!
