Baked Lemon Drop Cake

Part of the reason that I went to Houston for spring break was to make sure that I was home for my grandfather's birthday. My mom's parents are so much fun. I'm lucky enough to be the oldest child of their oldest daughter so they were very young grandparents for all of my childhood. They've aged a little bit but they're still very active. They live and die by their tennis schedule and my grandfather is especially obsessed with the sport. He even changed his cable provider to make sure that he could get the Tennis Channel! That's some serious dedication. As you might imagine, both of my grandparents tend towards the "health nut" or "exercise freak" type. In the 80's they went through the same juicing fad as the rest of America and I have vivid memories of being forced to drink some crazy combination of vegetable and fruit juices with a really thick layer of oh-so-not-appetizing foam on top. Ugh. But once a year, on my grandfather's birthday, all pretensions towards the healthy life cease and my family gathers for what has become a sacred tradition: Kentucky Fried Chicken. My grandfather eats it one day a year and he says that he loves it because it's the closest to the fried chicken that his grandmother used to make when he was a little boy. The KFC is the same every year but other things are open to change, like the cake.

The Baked: New Frontiers in Baking cookbook has been making rounds in the blogosphere for months now. I read about it and thought that it looked like a great book but there was no way that I was going to buy it. The last thing that I needed was another book to encourage me to bake more desserts. Otherwise, I'm going to have to buy a juicer and go on a liquid diet and I still haven't lost my fear of that foam. As luck would have it though, I received a gift certificate for Christmas and I got the book. And I love it. I love to read about all of the delicious desserts inside and I wish that I lived closer so that I could walk andn buy a piece of something, because the recipes in this book make HUGE servings! If you cut the recipe in half, you end up with a normal serving size. This means that for one or two people the recipe really needs to be cut into quarters. I was an English major, ok? Sometimes I still have these little moments of unexpected bliss where I think, "I never have to take another math class as long as I live!" I can do the math . . . but I loathe doing it. So, I mostly ogle Baked when I'm all by myself. But, for a celebration, a birthday celebration, this is your book! The cakes in here are amazing and I quickly decided that because my grandfather loves lemon, I was going to make the Lemon Drop Cake for his birthday.

I made the cake layers the day beforehand and the lemon curd as well. The recipe calls for three 8" pans but I only have two so I baked two and refrigerated the batter for the third layer, then I baked the third layer. I have trouble eyeballing the batter (and heaven forbid I should measure it out) so I ended up with one thick layer and two thinner layers. No matter, I decided that I'd just split the thick layer and make a 4-layer cake. I made 1 1/2 times the amount of lemon curd and frosting to make sure that I'd have enough to deal with all four layers. I went over to my grandparents' house to assemble the cake and make the frosting because that way I could spend time with my grandmother too. Well, I suppose that being by myself in Washington has had some negative effects because it was hard for me to deal with all of the scrutiny while I was putting the cake together. Especially when disaster struck. You see, I split the thick layer and proceeded to start assembling the cake. And then I turned around and I could just hear sirens in my head as I saw the third layer of the cake falling apart and oozing out of the lemon curd and the sides. This is the carnage of my layer:

And then my grandmother, I just love her, but she's sort of giving me a running commentary: "Wow, Jessica, I've never seen that happen to you before. Oh my goodness, what are you going to do? You're not going to throw it away, are you? What are you going to do?" And, when it's already hot in the kitchen and you're sort of freaking out because one layer is toast and the top layer looks like this:

Those are the times when it's nice to be alone in the kitchen to troubleshoot. It's not always fun to have your nearest and dearest in the kitchen with you. So, with my grandmother hovering right behind me, asking me all the while what I was going to do, I glued the giant fissure back together with frosting, crumb coated the cake, and all was well. This cake is very, very moist, which is a good thing, but I think that it also makes it succeptible to cracks and such. And, it was all downhill from there. I finished up the cake and proceeded to make a batch of margaritas because darned if I didn't need a cocktail by then!

The verdict on the cake? It's excellent! The lemon flavor is in every element of the cake and it strikes the perfect balance between sweet and tart. So, I can say that the cakes in the Baked cookbook are beautiful but they're also moist and tasty and that's the most important thing!


If you would like the recipe for this cake I highly recommend you look at Baked:  New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. It is well worth the cost! If you would like a test run you can check out your local library.