Lemon Cake with Marscapone and Lemon Curd

This recipe is originally from Annie Bell’s Gorgeous Cakes, but has been tweaked a bit by me.

The cake is dense, damp and intensely flavoured, and the lemon marscapone filling is strong but not cloying. It’s not overly delicate – looks more like farmhouse kitchen cooking than a patisserie creation. But the flavour is so rich and simple, it’s a really special cake, and a nice alternative to the ubiquitous chocolate that is always the first thing to mind when you think “rich cake”.

I am always amazed by the value you can get from a single lemon. Such a concentrated, full flavour from an ordinary, cheap ingredient.

Marscapone is an expensive ingredient, but I’ve discovered that it does freeze – I bought a container marked down at the supermarket close to its used-by date and froze it. I put it in the fridge overnight to de-frost slowly, then whipped it well with the lemon curd, and it was fine.

Ingredients

Cake
225g butter at room temperature
225g raw sugar
225g self-raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 eggs
50mL cream
Zest and juice of one lemon

Curd
Zest and juice of one lemon
2 eggs
60g butter
90g raw sugar

Topping
150g marscapone cheese
Juice of one lemon
50g raw sugar

Make lemon curd. Put all curd ingredients in a bowl over simmering water. Whisk until it thickens. Cover with clingwrap and leave to set.

Make cake. Pre-heat oven to 170° (160° fan-forced). Grease two 20cm round cake tins. Cream butter and sugar together, beat in remaining ingredients (can also be done in food processor). Divide mix between two prepared tins. Bake 40-45 minutes or until cooked.

Topping. Mix lemon juice and sugar together, pour slowly over the two takes while still warm and in tins. Leave to soak in as cakes cool.

Assemble. Mix curd (you may not need all of it) with marscapone, use to sandwich cakes together. Decorate the top as you wish (eg. dust with icing sugar). Okay to cover with clingwrap and refrigerate if needed.