Wedding Cake Baking - Part 2: Lemon Curd

For some reason I never realized how easy it was to make lemon curd until a couple of years ago, when I made it to fill a cake for a dinner my friend Lauren and I made for her mom. And once I made that realization I have never gone back to the processed jarred stuff sold in stores.

I made this particular lemon curd to fill the second tier of the wedding cake. The great thing about making a white cake with lemon curd filling is that you use the egg whites in the cake and the leftover yolks you use in the curd.


I use a recipe from Alton Brown that is available on the Food Network website.

You need lemons, egg yolks, sugar and butter. (I made a double batch of this recipe).

First you zest your lemons and then squeeze them. I tend to microwave my lemons after zesting for about 5 seconds as it seems to make them easier to juice.


Then in a big metal or glass bowl, mix your egg yolks and sugar until you have a paste like consistency. Then add lemon juice, and lemon zest and whisk together.


Place the bowl over a double boiler over medium and whisk until hot and the mixture coats the back of a spoon.


Then you remove the bowl from the double boiler and add the butter one pat at a time, whisking until it has fully melted and repeat the process until all the butter is incorporated.


I then pour my lemon curd into a mason jar (I think this is the easiest way to store it) and place in my fridge to cool, until I am ready to use it.

Wedding Cake Baking - Part 1

Since this was my very first wedding cake making experience, I had practiced it a bit and knew generally how long the process was going to take. So I made a very handy timeline that laid out when I should do each part of the wedding cake baking so that I would be organized and efficient, and so that I wouldn't forget anything.

The picture on the right is the cake concept that I showed the bride.

Day One - Wednesday
- Bake all cake layers:
- 2: 12" chocolate cake layers,
- 2: 10" vanilla cake layers,
- 2: 8" chocolate cake layers

- Make lemon curd for filling the vanilla cake tier.

Day Two - Thursday
- Make Peanut-butter Buttercream
- Make Vanilla Butter Buttercream
- Split and fill all cake tiers (12" with peanut-butter, 10" with lemon curd, 8" with vanilla buttercream)
- Crumb coat all three cake tiers.

Day Three - Friday
- Frost all cakes with vanilla buttercream and then cover with white fondant

Day Four - Saturday (Wedding Day)
- Assemble cake stand
- Make floral cake topper and base
- Box cakes up for transport to wedding venue
- Assemble cake on location and place flowers in the spacer between the top two tiers.

This timeline actually worked out really well and had time budgeted into it so that I actually had time to bake and decorate a cake for an event on Sunday (more on that later) and do unexpected things like find flowers for the cake and pick up the parents from the airport when they came to town unexpectedly.

I would say that if you were going to be working on the cake full time (as in not going to work for 8 hours a day and then commencing baking afterward) you could definitely condense this into a shorter time period.

And I know some of you might be thinking "eating cake that was baked 4 days ago is probably not very good". Well I kinda thought the same thing when I started this project. But that is why I did practice cakes and picked recipes that were moist, but more about the specific cake recipes later.

All in all, I would say that this project went fairly smoothly and I would most likely attempt it again.

Why I haven't been blogging the last week...

I baked a WEDDING CAKE!

Here is the happy couple cutting the cake...
Congratulations Becca & Will!

More info on the making of the cake to come later ...

Success ...

Woohoo! S'mores cupcakes version 2 are sooo much prettier than yesterdays failed attempt.

Here they are just frosted with a vanilla frosting that has the marshmallow-y texture, perfect for a s'more.
And then all golden brown and toasty...

And all tasty and ready to eat...

Ugly ... but oh so tasty...

So I have wanted to make S'mores cupcakes for a while now, so I thought I would make a batch today.

I started by making a graham cracker crust for the bottom of the cupcake, just graham cracker crumbs and melted butter pressed into the bottom of the cupcake liner.

Then I placed a marshmallow into each cupcake, and covered with a flourless chocolate cake batter. Baked in a 350 degree oven for 12 minutes.

The cupcakes looked quite good as they were baking and as they came out of the oven.

If only they had stayed looking just like this, I could have topped them with frosting and they would have been perfect.

Instead I pulled the cupcakes out of the tin and set them on the cooling rack. When I came back into the kitchen 5 minutes later they looked a little bit different. See how much it shrank back down after the marshmallow cooled. This would make it way too difficult to frost.

So I figured that I might as well taste one... so I cut it in half so you could see the layers first. Yum, a perfect graham cracker crust which gives it texture then moist chocolate cake and goooey marshmallow.
So although they are ugly, I don't think I will have any problem eating them today.

Chocolate Apricot/Strawberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes...

Wow long title for a short post today, just lots of pictures...


Chocolate cupcakes filled with apricot/strawberry jam and covered with cream cheese whipped cream frosting.

Adding cream cheese to the whipped cream frosting helps the whipped cream hold its shape and also adds that little bit of unexpected flavor.

The little toppers on the cupcake are raspberry hard candy that I made from scratch.

Sticky, sticky, yummy jam…

I grew up in a small town and our house was surrounded by apricot orchards. Therefore every summer we would make up batches of apricot jam when the apricots were perfectly ripe and then we could enjoy the taste of summer throughout the year. Now I live in the middle of the city, and I’m not sure there is even an apricot orchard left in this county, which is sad. But every Friday in the summer I walk downtown to the farmers market and buy up all my fresh fruits for the week. Well after enjoying some fantastic apricots, I decided to make jam.

I picked up supplies at the grocery store; canning jars, lids and pectin. And then walked down to the farmers market for apricots. The vendor looked at me a little funny as I loaded up my bag with ten pounds of the squishiest looking apricots. I’m sure she thought I was crazy cause no way could I consume that amount of fruit but see the secret to our jam has always been using the apricots that were almost overripe. So the recipe for apricot jam is very easy containing only a few ingredients; apricots, lemon juice, pectin and sugar.

I pit the apricots and blend most of them in my blender till I have a liquid. About ¼ of the apricots I cut into quarters and throw into the mix for texture then I add the lemon juice to the mix. Now here is where I veer off the recipe from the pectin box. I double the recipe. Despite the fact that the recipe says DO NOT DOUBLE in big bold letters. But the reason for this warning is that some stovetops do not get hot enough to heat your jam quickly enough for the pectin to do its job, but my stove has a huge burner that is capable heating the jam mixture sufficiently, so I break the rules. I sterilize the jars in the dishwasher (my dishwasher has a sterilization function) and then fill the still hot jars with jam, then place a lid on the jar and tighten the ring to hold the lid on.

Then I flip the jar over and leave the jar on the counter. As the jam cools and sets the air pressure does something science-y and the lids seal. You will know that the jars have sealed when the pop out button on the top of the lid sucks down and doesn’t click/pop when you press on it.

Now after making a double batch of apricot jam, I had some apricots left over and I also had half a flat of strawberries in my fridge. Well I like apricot jam and I like strawberry jam, so why not apricot/strawberry jam. So I followed the same process and made some apricot/strawberry jam. And now I shall find a whole bunch of uses for these yummy jams… or I could just eat them using a spoon.