for my mums....37TH birthday *shifty eyes* i made her a lemon, ginger, poppyseed cake because, well, she loves lemon desserts! and she puts ginger in almost anything she can, so i added some of that too!
what i did for this cake was modify it from one i found in my cake book. the original recipe is an orange poppyseed cake, but i was looking to do lemon and figured i would just change this one up. here is what you need to make this cake:
- 3/4 of a cup of REAL butter
- 3/4 of a cup of sugar
- finely grated zest of one lemon
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup of flour
- 2 1/2 tablespoons of poppyseeds
the original recipe calls the the zest of 1 and 1/2 oranges but lemons have a more intense flavour than oranges so i only did one. beat the butter, sugar and lemon zest until it's pale and creamy. now beat in your eggs, one at a time.
this is when i decided to add in the ginger. what i should have done was pop the root in the freezer for an hour or so before grating it, but i didn't think of it and just did it from the fridge so when i grated it into the mixture, it was more like mush. not really a big deal because it's being mixed into the batter anyway and it still has the same flavour. so peel off the skin and grate!
giant piece of ginger or miniature grater?
now sift in your flour. i know i always say this, but it's especially important that you sift your flour! due to the consistency of this cake, i would say it's extra important. if there are lumps, it will stay as lumps!
once this is done, fold in all those wonderful poppyseeds! this is my favourite picture from this cake making day!
i put my cake in an 8", round cake pan and the size was perfect, so i would use that if you have one on hand. make sure it's well greased before putting the batter in. the mixture is rather thick, so you'll have to smooth it out in the pan. put it in a 350℉ oven for.... well, the time is confusing on this one for me. my recipe says 50 minutes, but i checked at 30 minutes and it was definitely done. if it were up to me, i would have been in there less than 30 minutes, probably 25. so watch your cake because all ovens vary. let it cool in the pan for 5 minutes and then take it out to cool on a rack.
next up is the icing, which is fantastic! you need:
- finely grated zest of one lemon
- a 250g tub of mascarpone cheese
- 1/2 a cup of confectioners sugar
- the juice from half a lemon
this is where you will have to grate the zest of another lemon. mix that with your mascarpone cheese and the confectioners sugar and beat it until it's smooth and creamy. "smooth and creamy" never happened for me. mascarpone cheese is very thick. i had never used it before and expected it to be the consistency of sour cream, but it is, in fact, more like cream cheese. very thick. and no matter how much i mixed it, it wasn't creamy. maybe i should have used an actual beater instead of doing it manually? anyway, that's where i modified the recipe a little more. i squeezed some juice from half a lemon and added that in to thin it out. worked pretty well. then i took some segments from the other half and used it to decorate.
spreading it on the cake was kind of hard but i managed with my palette knife thing. and i also used my hands. not going to lie....
the cake was great! it wasn't too sweet, which was nice. i love the little crunch you get from the poppyseed. i would definitely make this again. it's great with tea! (my mum had tea, i was still finishing my wine from dinner, HAHA!)
the final product!
next is Jackie! i'm very excited for her cake. it's.....different. and after that is Matt G! so many cakes in so little time!!!!!
