Confusion

I kept to the new plan and went with the lemon cake.  After a slight crisis with the baking paper - I'm never buying anything that's not non-stick again, the faff with lining the baking tins is too much for me! - the cake went in and I made the filling, and now it's all cooling nicely.  So all I need to do now is build it up and ice it, which is my favourite bit anyway.

I went to the wee green grocers round the corner from my house for my lemons and they had a box of cherries out which looked lovely and tasty so I just went ahead and asked for some of them, but when the woman was putting them in a bag for me she asked if I wanted a quarter, so I said yes, thinking she meant a quarter kilo which is the perfect amount.  But then, when she gave me them there were about 7 cherries in the bag, so what did I get a quarter of??  Seriously, I know it must be something Imperial that frankly never even occurred to me, but what was it, a quarter pound or a quarter ounce?  How much even is an ounce, in grammes?

I thought that everything was sold in Metric nowadays and if you wanted Imperial you'd have to ask for it, but I guess not!  It's really annoying though, why can't everyone just let go of the old Imperial measurements and go with Metric, which is more accurate anyway!

Next time I go in there I guess I'll have to be really specific about how much I want!  Is it quite common to get things sold in Imperial measures, still?  It never occurs to me, in the supermarkets everything is sold in price-per-kilos and I wouldn't have a clue if you asked me to measure out a pound of something!

When I was living in Spain my American flat-mate went out to the fruit shop one day and came back with two big bags full of oranges... turns out he had no idea about Metric measurements so he asked for 2 kilos thinking that sounded like a reasonable amount, and then he was too embarrassed to say he didn't want them when he was presented with this mountain of fruit.  He was eating those oranges for about 2 months!

Cake Time

It's amazing how much the weather affects your mood - and your appetite!  When it was raining at the start of the week, I was planning on making a caramel cake to take to my friend's party tomorrow night.  Today, with the sun belting down, I decided to go for a lemon cake instead!  If it rains tomorrow I'll probably change my mind... but by then it'll be too late anyway so I'll just need to go with it!

This is the same lemon sponge cake that I made before, and it's really tasty.  It's like a lemon overload - lemon-flavoured sponge, lemon curd between the 4 layers, and lemon buttercream icing on top.  Ohhh yeah!  All the lemon flavours are quite subtle so it's not overwhelming but when you put them all together it just like the perfect lemon cake!

Need to go to the supermarket for flour and eggs though, can't be bothered.  And my dad's just put his jammies on so my chances of a lift may be a bit slim!!

Cake!

Today I trotted off to the shops and came back armed with butter and lemons... and so commenced the lemon-layer-cake challenge!

I scoured the Internet looking for lemon sponge recipes and I found loads.  Most of them were for lemon drizzle, or lemon syrup, which wasn't what I wanted this time.  So in the end I stuck with my old faithful, and took a recipe from The Caked Crusader's blog of joy.

My cake is slightly different to hers because I topped it with lemon buttercream icing, rather than the kind of icing she shows in the recipe.  Her's looked perfectly nice but I just can't beart to pass on the buttercream!



layered and curded, before icing

This was the hardest cake I've made so far... it involved slicing the two baked sides in half, so I had 4 layers, and then adding the home made lemon curd between each layer and stacking them.  Once again, my layers aren't totally straight and even, but I think once the icing's on you don't really notice.  And it doesn't affect the taste!  I really had no idea what I was doing with the lemon curd, or what the outcome should be, but I gave it a whirl and it turned out fine.  It seems to have a good zing! to it anyway, which is all you really need.

Unfortunately, I was making this cake to take to a surprise party I'd organised for someone, but it's all gone belly up and now I don't even know if I'll be able to give it to him.  I know it'll go down well with Familia Smeaton, but it does feel like a bit of an anti-climax going through all that effort and that not being able to give it to it's intended eater!  Never mind, party of the fun is in the making, I guess.  And my mum will be delighted!

Final thought of the day: 

you're never so glad to have a dishwasher, as when you've just baked a cake: