The women in our family love cake, especially any kind of lemon cake, well actually we love lemon anything. The guys love lemon, too, but they're more of pie/cobbler/cookie guys, cake just isn't their thing.
So it's time to bake for Easter, and of course it has to be lemon, and coconut, I must have lemon and coconut for Easter, it's just the way I roll. I was searching for a new recipe, and I found a really popular one on Pinterest, complete with 7-minute frosting, which I haven't made in years, and 7-minute frosting is just delightful, light, fluffy, yummy frosting, not heavy like cream cheese frosting, it's what mother always made when I was a child, good memories.
After many discussions with my friend, Carlene, about this cake, I decided it was the "one" for Easter. After all, it was filled with lemon curd, and we all know that lemon curd is absolute nectar of the gods, this cake had to be good. So I made the lemon curd and popped it in the fridge the day before the family arrived, and got up Saturday morning to make the cake. The house was busy, the kitchen a bit chaotic, as it always is when family is home, but it's the way I like it. I got all the ingredients assembled, found the pans, lined pans with parchment, sifted, separated eggs, beat the ingredients separately, are you getting the idea, here? This cake was a royal pain in the patootie!!!!
I took it out of the oven, it was lovely, I put it on the racks to cool, we left for lunch, my cake was sitting there with tea towels draped over it so it wouldn't dry out. Later in the day, in between playing with Abbie and smooching Ben, I made the 7-minute icing, which actually requires ten minutes of beating with an electric mixer, eight of which is done over boiling water on the stove. Egads, no wonder I don't make that frosting anymore, but oh, it's delightful.
The recipe called for splitting the layers of cake, and filling all of it with lemon curd, but I was pretty frazzled by this time, and decided to just put both lemon curd and frosting between and on top of the cake. It would work fine, right??? Wrong!!!!! I had a heck of a time, the combination of lemon curd and frosting made the layers want to slide sideways, and I had to keep adjusting, but it's a cake you chill, so I knew once I got it in the fridge, it would be fine. Naturally, I forgot to take pictures *sigh* but it was a beautiful cake with a heavy dusting of moist coconut on the top. But, oh, it was such a pain to make, I told everyone that they had better enjoy it, because I was never making it again!
By now it's Saturday night, the cake had chilled nicely, I cut slices of it, Lindsay took a bite and moaned, then Deanna declared it was one of the best cakes she had ever eaten, and I'm thinking, OH, NO, they like it, they REALLY like it! And the guys, meh, not so much, but they're not cake eaters, remembers.
So will I be making it again? Oh, sure I will. My girls loved it, and that's what mothers-in-law do, they do special things to make their sweet daughters-in-law happy. But the next time I'll make the entire cake before everyone arrives, I think it will be much easier that way.
And since I didn't have a picture of my cake, I emailed the originator, Celeste, from Sugar & Spice Blog, and she graciously let me use her picture.
I'm posting the recipe on Jan CAN CAN Cook. If you want a really spectacular, sinfully decadent cake, this is it, ladies!
Photo and original recipe courtesy of Celeste at Sugar & Spice Blog
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