Week 21, August 15, 2011: Victoria cake with lemon curd and cream cheese filling

I was so excited about this cake.



I had been invited to lunch at one of my coworker's homes to welcome her baby girl and catch up with some of the other fac.  This was the prego co-worker who "yelled" at me to hurry up with the frosting on my late days.

I wanted to make something summery and tasty and figured a nice Victorian sponge cake (tea cake) with some lemon curd and another filling would be divine.

I was wrong :(

I got the recipes for cakes and filling from that World of Cake book I've been using recently.  It had more eggs than the other sponge cake recipes I've used, but I liked the idea of two pans instead of one and figured why not try a new recipe when I can't seem to keep mine standing in the center.

Two things threw me: 1, the way the egg whites are incorporated.  Rather than being folded in at the very end, they're added with the flour to the wet as you would with milk, and then I had to add the vanilla and beat some more... It sort of defeated the purpose of beating the whites stiff.

2, the cooking time.  It looked browned in said cooking time and the toothpick came out clean, but when I cut into it and took a bite, all I could taste was egg.  Everyone was pleasant about it and said it was delicious, but I was mortified. I know what any logical person would say, why did you wait for a party to try a new recipe- go with the tried and true.  My response, have you met me? This is what I do. I try new things and sometimes they work and sometimes you waste a morning on gross cake.  It happens.

I have a tested and well loved lemon curd recipe, but I was being lazy (didn't want to run upstairs for my computer), so I used the one at the back of the book.  It said it would be done in 12 minutes... hahahaha. 35 minutes of stirring and I gave up.  When I went to put the cake together in my co-worker's kitchen (I was on a tight schedule, again, my fault) it made an absolute mess... luckily she has a flat top range and I'm quick with a sponge.



Will attempt this one again with some modifications- what I like better is there's no stuff to heat unlike the other recipe I use, so it's quicker.  I will be adding the whites at the end and baking the hell out of it.

To give you all the heads up, we've got cheesecake, sponge cake (probably a refined tres leches) and creme brulee on the agenda to celebrate one full year of cake 30!  As promised, I'm polishing up two of the favorites to make staples for company.

Then, I'm going to be switching it up a little bit... one of this years goals was to be vegetarian again and I'm thinking that ovo-lacto vegetarianism (still having eggs and milk) isn't enough, so I'll be throwing some vegan desserts and raw desserts into the mix.  Remember, the Big Pineapple isn't really that big (remember the finding marscapone fiasco?), so I promise there won't be ridiculous or impossible ingredients and I refuse to buy a dehydrator- the counters are crowded enough already.

We'll see how this goes!
Have a good week!
And happy belated 3oh to my bud, Jeri Lynne!