I’d like to say that baking a cake is a piece of cake. Oh how I was so wrong. Three cakes later I finally made a great fluffy and moist lemon cake with vanilla cream cheese buttercream.
The first recipe that I followed was one off tik tok and it failed miserably. The influencer that I followed had her steps one way in the video and completely different in her blog where she has all the rest of her recipes. While trying to mix all the ingredients together my head was all spread out in what steps it went in.
When baking in general you want to mix all your wet and dry ingredients separately. I mixed my wet ingredients and slowly added in my dry ingredients. I put it in the oven for about 30 minutes and took it out. My hopes were so high because it rose like it was supposed to, it was fluffy. I was so happy. I left it out to cool for a couple hours and when I came back the cake was more dense than a car tire. I cut it in half and was so disappointed. I was fooled by a TikTok recipe. I had two more days to make the most perfect cake for a birthday and I started to stress.
Shortly after, I spent hours researching and wondering what made it so dense. My initial thought was the flour, it called for 3 cups. However, I had a lot of wet ingredients and didn’t know if that was the reason. After my thorough investigation on the web for cakes, I soon realized that cake flour was my new best friend.
The next recipe I found called for it and I soon learned that it and lemon went well together. At least so I thought. I completed the same steps, wet then dry and slowly added in my flour then mixed and so on. It was time to bake in the oven for 30 minutes at 350. I took the cakes out and I was over the moon, they were big and fluffy and I was ready for them to cool and start to frost. After they were cooled I cut them in half and started assembling. My two baked cakes soon turned into a four layer cake and in the fridge it went to cool. That way I could add the final layer of buttercream on the outside to decorate.
The next morning I went into the fridge and my four layer tall cake turned into a 2 layer cake. Over the time in the fridge it turned back into that dense brick. I brought it out to see when it went to room temperature and if it would rise back up. I went about my day for the time to pass and I made the decision to cut it and try it. The flavor was spot on but instead of a cake it was a bread texture and I needed a second opinion so my dad tried it and he agreed with me.
After another couple hours of researching I soon learned that the citrus in the lemon makes the cake dense and the way to avoid that is adding water to your batter.
Cake number three was in the making, yet when you add water to the batter take out the teaspoons of lemon it calls for out of the water. The balance between the water and citrus helps it not become super dense. After the day of cooling my cake was still fluffy in the center.
I cut my two cakes in half to become a 4 layer fluffy and airy cake. I piped the buttercream on the edges of the cake and then filled the inside and set the next tier on top and so on. After filling the tiers I put the buttercream all around the cake and in the fridge it went. The next morning I piped on an S and put the 18 sparklers around the edges and boom my cake was done.
Three tries later but it was worth every step of the way.
