Lemon Raspberry Wedding Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

Lemon Raspberry Wedding Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

by | May 23, 2017 | 11 comments

‘Who is making your wedding cake?!’ was the question I was asked a gajillion times a week during the run-up to the big day. I suppose when a cake-obsessed, dessert guzzler like myself marries an ex-pastry chef turned chocolate maker, well, then people think about these kinds of things! The answer? Well, duh we’re making our own wedding cake!
Some brides stress about the dress. Others agonize over the decor or stationery. Not me – I was all about the cake! So there are a few reasons we decided to make it ourselves: One, I was NOT going to have one of those piece-of-art, Pinterest-worthy cakes that look incredible but taste like cardboard. There is nothing more disappointing in life than dry cake and I was not about to start married life with one – oh hell no.

Secondly, why do we have to wait until right at the end of the day to cut the cake? Life’s too short… So we ate the cake first. Jip, straight after the ceremony, the bubbly flowed and we all scoffed ourselves silly on cake. And thirdly, I wanted the first thing we did as husband and wife to be special, and there is nothing we enjoy more than baking which is how we decided to assemble our wedding cake, live, right there in front of our guests. Eeeek!

The cake itself, was the first recipe Chocolate Maker and I baked together. Raspberry is my favourite flavour, while lemon is his and the buttercream is scented with vanilla and spiced rum we brought back from our recent trip to Mauritius. The lemons may or may not have come from my neighbours lemon tree (this is not a confession!). Obviously we couldn’t make the wedding cake on the day of the wedding (we made it the day before), so to keep it super moist, we soaked each layer in a tangy lemon syrup – it’s a secret baking weapon that makes all the difference!
I decorated it with olive branches to bring in a bit of Italy (since I am now, half-Italian afterall!), lemon branches and pomegranates from the Riebeek Kasteel area. The cake was perfect – fragrant, moist, not too sweet and was the perfect pairing for the Ayama MCC (my favourite bubbly!).

It was a seriously delicious cake and the perfect way to start a marriage – on a sweet note, with lots and lots of butter! ?

LEMON AND RASPBERRY WEDDING CAKE WITH VANILLA BUTTERCREAM

This recipe makes a standard 4-layer, 24cm cake. To make my two-tiered wedding cake, I doubled the recipe below (cake and buttercream) which made an extra 24cm cake plus 2 x 18cm cakes for the top tier. The final cake easily served 70 hungry guests.

SERVES 10-12

 

For the cake:

500g butter, softened

500g castor sugar

400g whole eggs (about 9 large)

400g cake flour

80g cornstarch or corn flour

100g buttermilk

1 tsp baking powder

finely grated zest of 2 lemons

 

For the buttercream:

300g egg whites

450g castor sugar

1020g unsalted butter, cut into blocks, softened (see tip)

1 juicy vanilla pod, seeds scraped

juice of 1/2 lemon

 

For the lemon syrup:

120g white sugar

120ml water

zest and juice of 2 lemons

 

Good-quality raspberry jam, for assembling

Olive branches, pomegranates and lemon branches, to decorate

 

Start by making the sponge layers. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celcius (fan-forced, or 170 degrees Celcius convenional). Grease and line 2 x 24cm springform cake tins. Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment for 8-10 minutes. The mixture should be very white and very fluffy. Next, add the eggs in one by one, beating well after each addition. Sift the dry ingredients together. Remove the bowl from the mixer and using a spatula, fold in the dry ingredients alternatively with the buttermilk, adding the lemon zest last. Divide the batter between the cake tins and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes then turn the oven up by 10 degrees for the remaining 10 minutes. Test the cake with a skewer inserted into the middle. If it comes out clean, it is baked. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before unmoulding. Level each cake off using a knife then slice each cake in half horizontally so you have 4 layers.

To make the buttercream, place the egg whites and sugar in a bowl that fits over one of your saucepans. Fill the bottom of the saucepan with water and bring it to a gentle simmer. Place the bowl with the egg and sugar over the hot water and stir gently with a whisk (don’t whisk to aerate the mixture). Keep stirring until the mixture reaches 60 degrees Celcius on a thermometer or until the egg is hot to the touch. Transfer the hot mixture to the bowl of a standmixer and using the whisk attachment, whip the mixture on high until light and fluffy. Continue whipping for a good 10 minutes or until the meringue is cool to the touch. Slowly add the butter one block at a time. Scrape in the vanilla seeds and squeeze in the lemon juice, to taste. Cover and set aside at room temperature until ready to frost the cake.

To make the syrup, place the sugar, water, lemon zest and juice in a saucepan and bring to the boil for 1 minute. Allow to cool completely.

To assemble the cake, place the first cake layer on a cake stand and brush well with the syrup. Spread with a thin layer of raspberry jam and top with a layer of vanilla buttercream. Continue layering the cake, syrup, raspberry jam and buttercream until all the layers are assembled. Cover the top and sides of the cake with the remaining buttercream and smooth with a palette knife (using a cake decorating turn table really helps). Place in the refrigerator to set. Decorate with olive branches, lemon branches and cracked pomegranates just before serving.

 

TIP Never make a buttercream using salted butter – I know it’s tempting because of the ridiculous price of unsalted butter – but the amount of butter used means that you’ll be left with an extremely salty buttercream. Don’t do it.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GUNTHER SCHUBERT OF VORSPRUNG STUDIO
Berry White Chocolate Drizzle Cake

Berry White Chocolate Drizzle Cake

by | May 5, 2016 | 1 comment

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Excuse me while I get cheesy and shmooshy for a moment and dedicate this post to my beautiful mom. How she put up with me as a child I have no idea! If I look back at the mountains of washing up I used to leave her with, the various sauces and batters that splattered walls and ovens that I left her to clean up and the odd things I made her taste, I honestly don’t know how my sister wasn’t her favourite 😉 Although I used to rope my sister into the cooking shows I hosted in the kitchen as well (she was my trusty assistant (ie partner-in-crime), so that’s probably why! This was the time when Delia Smith was huge (juuuust before Nigella’s slap dash way of cooking arrived) and Delia had all her ingredients neatly measured into a gajillion little bowls – even the ½ tsp of baking powder had it’s own itsy bitsy bowl. So, of course, everything in my cooking show had it’s own bowl too. Which meant a simple one-bowl cake recipe resulted in at least 10 bowls to wash up!
I wanted to make this cake as pretty and naturally beautiful as possible – just like my mom (hey I need brownie points here!). I was so inspired by the delicious unrefined Demerara Icing Sugar that Natura Sugars make which has no colourants or preservatives (it’s unbleached too!) but has a lovely caramel flavour, and while I wanted a pink cake, I didn’t want to add artificial colouring (which would defeat the point!). So I tinted it a pretty pink using a little beetroot juice – a clever (and inexpensive) way of making your own food colouring!
The vanilla cake recipe is a little different – using just egg whites instead of yolks but it’s lovely and moist and with the smashed raspberries in the middle? It’s just the bomb! So if your mom is the bomb, bake her this cake for Mother’s Day this weekend – I can’t promise it will make up for all the naughty things you did as a child, but it’s so delicious it will make her temporarily forget about them! x

White Chocolate Berry Drizzle Cake

Serves 8-12

 

4 1/2 cups cake flour, sifted

2 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

375g unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 3/4 cups Natura Golden Caster sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract

9 egg whites, at room temperature

2 1/4 cups buttermilk

 

Vanilla Buttercream

400g (3 ½ cups) Natura Demerara icing sugar

150g unsalted butter, softened

Milk, if necessary

 

Glaze

60g The Kate Tin White Baking Chocolate, finely chopped

1/4 cup (60ml) cream

2 tbsp (30ml) honey

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 beetroot, juiced

A squeeze of lemon juice

 

Variety of berries, flowers, to decorate the top

 

Preheat oven to 180C (conventional) or 160C (fan-forced) . Grease and line three x 20cm round cake tins. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Cream the butter, caster sugar and vanilla in a stand mixer until light, pale and fluffy – about 5 minutes. Add the egg whites one at a time, beating well in between each addition. Add one third of the sifted dry ingredients and mix just until combined, then add half the buttermilk. Mix well then add the remaining dry ingredients, and the last of the buttermilk. Only mix until the ingredients are combined – careful not to over mix the batter. Divide the cake batter between the three cake tins and bake for 30-35 minutes or until the cakes are golden brown and a toothpick coms out clean. Allow them to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then invert the cake and allow to cool on a cake stand completely.

Make the frosting by whipping the butter until fluffy. Sift the Natura Demerara Icing Sugar and add to the creamed butter. Whip until light, about 5 minutes, adding a few drops of milk if necessary. Assemble the cake by layering the sponge with the buttercream, some frozen smashed raspberries and continue layering. Smooth the sides with a spatula – don’t worry about being neat that’s the beauty of a naked cake!

Prepare the glaze by melting all the ingredients (except the beetroot) together in the microwave until smooth. Allow to cool until thickened then tint it a pretty pink with the beetroot. Drizzle the glaze over your iced cake then decorate with roses, berries and beetroot chips for crunch!

Disclaimer: This post has been created in collaboration with Natura Sugars – I only work with brands I think are awesome and that I actually use myself.