The week’s cake …. *drum rolls*

Doesn’t it look just inviting ? But 4 pages later, I had doubts. There are just too many waiting time, and plan-ahead steps and “curdling” issues to deal with. But. I remembered AnitSirk‘s comment and decided that if I didn’t try this, I’ll never figure it out. So, determined to show my kids that even if it looks hard, i’m sure it’s not THAT hard, I made the lemon curd.

Hmm, all is well .. and the curd’s chilling alright. Done for the night, Saturday would’ve been a busy day for me. The Custard Base and the Cake and gosh, there were so many steps. But, I’m persevering here, people!

The instruction for the custard base was simple enough, except that once I have the chocolate and the butter melting in the double boiler, I started to daydream because it was taking a while. Then suddenly, all the butter melted and it’s floating on top and the white chocolate remained as a big gob at the bottom of the bowl.

Gasp!

I decided to go ahead and add on the 4 eggs and whisk like mad, with the look of horror on my face. It was looking better. Phew! Upon reaching 60C, I took it off the heat and let it sit in a fridge for 45 minutes and started on my ingredients for the batter.

To make the buttercream, you’d have to beat butter till smooth and add the custrad base gradually.

Gasp!

Mine looked curdled to bits. Yikes! This spelled disaster. I turned the mixer on high and it still looked curdled. Ah well! I left it for 2 hours as intructed and proceeded with the batter.

Ingredients for cake batter. I used my last pieces of varlhona’s chocolate. This had better be fantabulous!

Now, this is right down my alley. All was well and I poured the batter into the pan and wondered it looked kinda of “little” in quantity. Looked around and saw my melted white chocolate sitting there staring and wondering why was it still on the counter and not in the pans?

Gasp!

Poured them back in the mixer, added the chocolate and poured in in pans again! Yikes! By this time, my pans were getting slightly or seriously messy.

But they smelled wonderful. The lemon zest was wonderful and both cakes had risen wonderfully, though one was slightly lopsided.

Now, time to assemble the buttercream.

I bet the custard base and butter the hell out of them and suddenly it looked so smooth and creamy. Amazing! It was so relief. I guess I really should’ve trusted the recipe more. When Rose asks you to let it sit for 2 hours, you’d better let it SIT! The lemon curd added later made it smelled heavenly.

I split the cakes into 2 and assembled it. Clearly my division of cake thickness was off, but hey, I’m learning here. Eye-balling things have never worked terribly well for me.

Tada!!

I was so impressed with myself. Wow!
Note to self: Must learn how to make decorative swirls. Rose made it sound easy but when I tried it, it looked messy, so I decided to go stripey. Easier and I thought this looked wonderful.

*some clapping would do wonders, folks!

And the cut cake. *dreams*

Gosh! I am so glad I made this because this just smelled heavenly!

SUnday morning, I called a few close friends for a cake-tasting session. Great idea to catch up with friends, I thought. And it was great.

Linda: The frosting was really delicious!

Zakir : Just when the white chocolate sends you to a lala-land, the lemon curd jolted you back, you go again and keeps coming back again. Great contrasting flavours. *he had 2 slices*

MrGart : Not that sweet.

Fina : Seriously, delicious.

Ras & Amalina : Super nice. You should sell this !

I am just glad I tried it, it was superb. Worth all the effort and it was fantabulous, just as it’s supposed to be.