In today's journey of baking it til I make it, I decided to attempt a lemon dessert. I'm a sucker for lemon-anything; it likely stemmed from having fond memories of eating lemon meringue pie with my grandfather.
Last night, I sat down and smoked a joint, headed to Pinterest and searched for lemon baking deserts. I was hungry (for obvious reasons) and wanted to pick the desert that had my mouth watering.
I stumbled across a Lemon Cream Butter Cake, it was described as if a lemon cheesecake and lemon cake made sweet dessert love and made the perfect baby. I was set—I hit the save button on Pinterest and went to the kitchen to look at what ingredients I needed.
Gluten-Free and Pro-Gluten Lemon Cream Butter Cakes
My wife is gluten sensitive, which makes baking anything that we can share is a challenge. For today's Bake it Til I Make it challenge, I decided I would attempt baking both with regular all purpose flour and coconut flour (gluten free). This would give my wife the opportunity to partake in the taste testing.
Ingredients needed for Lemon Cream Butter Cake
For Lemon Cream Butter Cake, I learned you need two sets of ingredients—the cream cheese filling and the cake. Don't be fooled, both the cream cheese and cake have a lot of the same ingredients.
Ingredients for the cream cheese filling
8 oz of full-fat cream cheese. Don't forget to let your cream cheese sit out on the counter to get to room temperature.
1 cup of confectionary sugar.
3 Tbsp of melted unsalted butter—let this butter chill before using.
1 large egg
1/2 of a lemon's zest
2 Tbsp of fresh-squeezed lemon juice
Ingredients for the cake
2/3 cup of all-purpose flour (I went with compliments from Thrifty Foods).
1/3 cup of granulated sugar.
1/8 tsp of salt (I use Himalayan rock salt).
1/2 cup of unsalted butter. You will need to melt the butter over the stove and let sit to cool or you can do what I did and put it in the fridge to speed up the cooling process.
2 tsp of baking powder.
2 large eggs
Lemon zest—one large lemon.
2 Tbsp of lemon juice—squeeze the life out of the lemons you zested with!
1/2 tsp of vanilla extract.
Baking Instructions for Lemon Cream Butter Cake
The instructions for this cake were a bit hard for me to follow. It might have been that I was looking on my phone and having to scroll up and down, but with both the cream cheese filling and cake having such similar ingredients I found myself second-guessing or wondering if I made a mistake.
I'll break these down for you so it's easy to follow. All you have to do is follow these steps.
Baking Preparation for Lemon Cream Butter Cake
Step 1
Preheat your oven to 325ºF or 180ºC for my fellow Canadians.
Step 2
Take your 8-inch springform pan and spray it with Pam. My technique is as if I were a graffiti artist tagging this pan to show it I was there. I made sure that it was covered so that there was no chance that lemon cream butter cake would stick to the walls of that pan.
Step 3
Laying parchment paper at the bottom of the springform pan. I took my pan that was freshly coated in cooking spray and laid it on a sheet of parchment paper. I took a pen, drew a circle around it, and started to cut it out. (I really didn't want to fuck this up, so I might have gone a little OCD).
Preparing the cream cheese filling
Step 1
Take a medium-to-large mixing bowl (I used the bowl from my stand-up mixer). Put the cream cheese into the bowl and start to mix your cream cheese on medium speed. If you left your cream cheese out long enough, you'll find your cream cheese will mix and cream easily.
Beat your cream cheese for 5 minutes.
Step 2
Add your confectionary sugar into your freshly mixed cream cheese. I decided to pour mine in slowly as the mixer was running. Real talk—I have no idea if that helps or if it does nothing.
Mix cream cheese and confectionery sugar for 2 to 3 minutes.
Step 3
Add your egg and beat that into your cheesy sugar mixture for 1 minute.
Step 4
Take your melted butter, vanilla extract, lemon juice, and zest and drop it in. You don't need to beat this long—all you need is 60-seconds!
Preparing the cake
Step 1
Grab your sifter. I've had mine for a while now, it looks pretty beat up, but it's still doing its job! In your bowl of cream cheese filling, sift in the all purpose flour, salt, baking powder, and white granulated sugar.
Mix it for 45 to 60 seconds, just long enough for everything to blend together.
Step 2
Pour in your room temperature melted butter into the mixture. Drop-in your eggs (and please, do not let those eggs shells fall in).
Drop those baby chicks, I mean eggs into the bowl. Follow it with your lemon juice, zest and vanilla.
Pouring your cake batter into the springform pan
Step 1
Grab that cake batter and bowl, take it over to your springform pan and pour that deliciousness evenly across the pan.
I took a spatula and evenly spread the batter so that the surface was flat and smooth.
Baking time for a Lemon Cream Butter Cake
Step 1
Take your pan and walk it over to your preheated oven. I put my cake on the middle rack—I figure better airflow to cook evenly? Again, I'm still learning.
Step 2
Call out, "Hey Siri, set a timer for 35 minutes". If you didn't guess, it takes 35 minutes in the oven to bake.
How long should a Lemon Cream Butter Cake chill for?
Once that loud alarm goes off on your iPhone and the 35-minutes is up, head over to your oven put on those boxing mitts, and take your prize out of the oven.
You will want your lemon cream butter cake to sit out for 10-minutes to air cool. Again, if you're like me, I always have my friend Siri tell me when it's time—technology is a great friend!
Once the 10-minutes is up, unlatch the spring on your pan, and put your delicious cake on a plate and put it in your refrigerator to chill and cool. The cake is meant to eat cool, so I recommend you let it cool for a minimum of 60 minutes.
What do you garnish your Lemon Cream Butter Cake with?
Now that your cake is cooled and those edges are looking dark, crisp, and ready to kick that party off in your mouth—it's time to garnish!
I garnished my lemon cream cutter cake with confectionary sugar. I have this fancy hand sifter (bought at Winners). Garnish the edges a bit heavier around than the middle of the cake.
Time to eat that cake!
I hope you had dinner before you try this, otherwise, stop the food prep because you're going to want seconds and thirds.
The Verdict
Overall, I feel great about this baking day. I made two cakes today, a gluten free and non-gluten free. If you ask my wife, the gluten free cake was pretty dense. After doing some research, it was found that when using coconut flour, you should NOT use the same amount of flour as you would with all purpose flour—note taken.
The non gluten free cake was a solid 8/10. After sharing it with my neighbours and eating it myself, it was clear that the texture of the cake was great. It was smooth, and the edges were perfect. The lemon flavour was there but everyone agreed it could use more lemon.
Gluten Free Lemon Cream Butter Cake Pictures
Lemon Cream Butter Cake Pictures
Comments