lemon and blueberry layer cake

 

The cake is a slight variation on this one I made many years ago, back when I used to put effort into my photography, ha! I think it used to be the most popular post on this blog (also back when I used to check stats.) It's a cute, little cake and I'm surprised it has taken me so long to bake something similar again.

The main change I made is the size as I scaled it up to an 8" layer cake. I think I used a 5 or 6 egg Victoria sponge mix with the zest of two lemons. In hindsight I wish I had added more blueberries to the batter (or not made such a huge cake batter?) but I was concerned about them adding too much moisture to the cake. Looking back at my original recipe I think I had a better ratio.

For my lemon curd filling I used my reliable Delia Smith recipe (documented here), although for whatever reason it didn't seem as punchy as usual which was a bit disappointing.

For the icing I used my personal perfected ratio for cream cheese icing: 2oz butter, 4oz icing sugar, 6oz full fat cream cheese (doubled to cover this size of layer cake.) Beat the icing sugar and butter together for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy before adding the cream cheese, then mix until fully incorporated.

I probably added lemon zest as well, but I can't remember. It is a tasty icing with or without adding extra flavours to it.

We also hosted a sausage roll bake off for Man's birthday with our families. It was quite a spread with at least 8 different types of flavours/fillings. I've never seen so many sausage rolls on a (horrible yet practical) breakfast bar.