A Thank You Cake

It still irritates me that he cut that slice unevenly and that I didn't then correct it!

So the last few weeks, well... my birthday happened. I’m not sure what occurred but after publishing that last blog post and feeling fairly on top of my feelings, I freaked out when I couldn’t sleep because of pain and my head went a little crazy. I find night time a bit scary to be honest (I know I sound like a child but bear with me), well not night time per say but bed time (and yes, the childlike theme continues!) I’ve always had trouble sleeping as far back as I can remember, it has always taken me quite a long time to switch off and relax. I remember waking up with migraines in the middle of the night from when I was quite young before the body pain set in. Now I find it really hard to sleep because once all the lights, noises and distractions are gone, often all I can think about is the pain or discomfort. I have dreams of being in pain and continuously crying. Add to that the fact that waking up and morning time is the worst time for my pain and I rarely wake up actually feeling like I’ve had a full night’s sleep and I think you may understand more why I don’t like going to bed. But anyway, I digress...so my birthday. Well I wasn’t feeling too hot on the day, but Mr Spoonie Foodie had the day off, my parents were coming down and we were going out for lunch so I wanted to have a good day, but there I was...crying. And what’s worse, is I just didn’t know what I was crying about. I kept it together whilst my parents were here and had quite a nice day, but as soon as they went the floodgates opened again. My poor man. However, tears were dried, planet of the apes was watched (a surprisingly good film, but then of course I’d love it – SO MANY FURRIES!) and Mr SF was his wonderful supportive self. And after a very long introduction, that’s actually what this post is about. Luckily that day was just a blip and that feeling hasn’t stayed with me continually, but he has. The blips happen fairly regularly in varying degrees, and I don’t remember the last week where I didn’t cry in his arms at least once. 

It can’t be easy being the significant other to a spoonie and I think it’s even harder for him than most. When they say opposites attract, they must have been talking about us. He is definitely lacking in empathy and is pretty utilitarian in his world view, I’m not being critical or harsh (don’t worry, he shows me love in so many ways so I’m not trying to make him out to be a monster), it is just true. He believes everybody should be a bit more selfish and care much less about other people’s feeling and emotions and then we’d all get on better. So it really is amazing that he has stayed with someone like me. Firstly, I’m very empathetic, to a point of fault. My emotions are very much worn on my sleeve and I am not very (read at all!) good at controlling or hiding them. Secondly I’m ill, both physically and mentally. I have weeks where I can’t leave the house and even on a good day my activity tolerance is very low. You have to have empathy to be able to cope with me in your life, otherwise my cancellations, mood swings and anxiety (I’m sure I could go on) would drive you mad. And yet, here is my un-empathetic, utilitarian man, going against everything he accepts as true to stay with me. He puts up with my mood swings, tears, depression and anger, and (most of the time) pretty quietly. So I decided to make him a cake. And not just any cake, but a miniature cake of lemony goodness topped with more and more citrusy lemon flavour, and something sparkly to show that it’s special. His favourite cake is lemon drizzle cake, but that wasn’t the look I was after, so he’ll just have to deal with this!

The recipe for the cake is based on Nigella Lawson’s  lemon drizzle cake, except instead of baking it in a loaf tin I divided it between two 4.5 inch spring form tins and I left out the drizzle. I also added extra lemon zest to the batter as I wasn’t going to be dousing it in a lemon syrup.

In an ideal world I would sandwich it with cream and lemon curd, but the boy doesn’t like lemon curd, so this would seem to defeat the object, thus it is both filled and covered in lemon Swiss meringue buttercream (SMB). If you haven’t had SMB before then try to imagine the lightest, silkiest, sexiest icing imaginable. And I bet it is better than that. It isn’t nearly as sweet as conventional buttercream, but is lighter and yet so much more indulgent. When I made my sister her engagement cake she made me promise that this icing would be all over her wedding cake! Swiss meringue buttercream requires a few gadgets. You really need to use a sugar thermometer to make the meringue, this will ensure it is safe to eat and also holds properly, and then it requires whisking for about 10 minutes, and that’s using a kitchenaid! If you haven’t made it before, I would highly recommend reading Sweetapolita’s blog post before embarking upon it, I have adapted her recipe for this cake.

And without further ado...let’s get started!

Lemon Cake

125 g unsalted butter
175 g caster sugar
2 large eggs
zest of 1 ½ lemons
175 g self raising flour
pinch of salt
60ml milk

Butter your tins and line the base with greaseproof paper.

Cream together the butter and sugar until very pale and fluffy. At this point it is difficult to over mix it so definitely err on the side of extra mixing. In my kitchenaid this takes about 5 minutes on a medium high speed.

Break the eggs into a bowl or jug with the lemon zest and mix it all up. Add about third mixture into the butter and sugar, and beat until well combined before adding the next third.

Once you’ve added the eggs and mixed it all on high until completely incorporated and the mix is quite thick again, Sift in the flour and add the milk. Fold by hand (or use the lowest speed on a stand mixer) until everything is JUST combined.

Divide mixture between the baking tins and cook in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until well risen, golden and springs back to the touch (or stick a skewer in, if any mix comes out stuck to it then you know you need to put it back in the oven).

Set aside to cool.

Lemon Swiss Meringue Buttercream

150g egg whites from 4 medium eggs

250g sugar (you can use granulated for this)

340g butter (take it out of the fridge when you start whipping the meringue)

Juice of one lemon

This amount makes more than enough to fill and top the cake, with some left over. It freezes though so that shouldn’t be a problem.

It is definitely worth weighing the eggs as you may have slightly smaller medium eggs than I do. 

You want to make sure the equipment you are using is completely free of grease, to do squeeze some lemon juice onto a piece of kitchen roll and wipe over all the equipment you are going to use

-        Heatproof bowl (the bowl of the mixer is fine)

-        Whisk x 2 (hand and electric)

-        Thermometer

Put an inch of water in a pan and set it on a low heat to simmer (you don’t want it boiling).

Separate your eggs (keep the yolks for ice cream!) and put the whites and sugar into the grease free heatproof bowl. Place this on the pan making sure that the water does not touch the bottom of the bowl.

Whisking the mixture to ensure it doesn’t cook (you definitely don’t want scrambled eggs) heat the whites and sugar mixture until it reaches 71 C (160F). You don’t have to constantly whisk or try to add any air in at this stage, that will be done once it is off the heat, just enough to keep the mixture from cooking. If you don’t have a thermometer you can use the sugar as a guide. At the right temperature you shouldn’t be able to feel any grains of sugar in the mixture.

At 71 C, take the bowl off the heat and put it back on the stand mixer (or just on a heatproof surface if you are using an electric whisk). With the wire whisk, whip the meringue until it is thick and glossy and the bowl is completely cool to the touch. As with all of these things, start slow and build up your speed. I usually start on 2 and gradually build up to the highest speed. This can take up to 10 or 15 minutes, and if you have the glass bowl like I do then it takes even longer for it all to get neutral to the touch.

Once it is thick and glossy and cool you have made Swiss meringue! Congratulations. Treat yourself and have a spoonful of the stuff, it is delicious! Because it was cooked before whipping it up, it is fine to eat. Now, once you’ve finished dancing your little dance of glee, cut the butter up into cubes.

Switch the whisk for the flat beater/paddle attachment and starting on a low speed add the butter in cube by cube. Don’t worry if it looks like it has split or curdled (I’ll refer you once again to Sweetapolita's amazing blog post), just keep going.

Once all the butter is in, turn the speed up a notch and mix until it is completely silky and smooth. Once silky add the lemon juice a tablespoon at a time, tasting as you go, until it is lemony enough.

Home made sprinkles

You might be able to see I added lemon rind to this batch, but I ended up needing so much more that you couldn't tell!

I wanted this to be a perfectly lemon yellow cake. My original plan was to have yellow icing with some details using the sprinkles. Unfortunately, my yellow colours were just not working and were making my icing a ridiculous colour. So I settled on covering the whole thing in a yellow shimmer sugar. I can’t say this adds anything to the flavour, but it does look pretty! I actually ended up using the colour ‘old gold’ instead of my yellow as my yellow was coming out decidedly orange.

Granulated sugar

Yellow food gel colour

Pop some sugar into a ziplock bag. Dip the end of a teaspoon into your colour and then smoosh (shh spell check, that should definitely be a word!) the colour into the sugar. Close the bag and squish and stir everything about inside to distribute the colour. Once it is the colour you want, lay it out on a plate to dry off a bit before using.

Assembly

Once you are ready to do the top, use strips of parchment paper to keep the stand/board clean. You can just slip them out once you are done.

You’ll need 2 cake boards that are the same size or slightly smaller than your cake for this. I tend to use whatever bit of cardboard i have lying around, cut it into shape and then cover with foil/clingfilm.

Trim any domes or bumps of the top of the cakes to give you a flat surface and then cut each one in half. A serrated knife works best for this, I use my bread knife.

Get another bowl. This is to scrape your palette knife on so that you don't get crumbs in the main bowl of icing. DON'T GET CRUMBS IN THE BIG BOWL OF ICING! And now that we've got that over...

Pop a splodge of icing on the cake board and then pop your bottom layer on it. This should actually be the top half of one of the cakes upside down, so that once stacked you end up with the bottom of the cake on the top. Stack and fill the cake as evenly as you can and then cover the cake in a crumb coat. This is just a thin layer of icing that is sticks all the crumbs onto the cake so when you put the actual icing on it stays neat and tidy. Put the cake in the fridge for a minute and reward yourself with a glass of wine and a sit down.

Once the crumb coat has set (touch it and see how hard it is) cover the sides in your final layer of icing (don’t do the top yet). If you are sensible you should really remember to leave extra rim of icing at the top, I didn’t and thus made my life much harder than it needed to be! Back in the fridge it goes to harden up slightly (just 5 or 10 minutes will be enough).

Pour your home made sprinkles (look at you, you domestic goddess, or god, we’re non-discriminatory here) into a baking tray that is long enough and wide enough for you to roll your cake back and forth in.

Place your second board on top of the cake, then lay it on its side in the baking tray and roll back and forth in the sprinkles to cover.

Put it the right way up again and take the board off the top. Splodge (oh i do love that word) some more icing on the top and smooth out. This is where that little rim of icing comes in handy because you can smooth that inwards and not have to fiddle about like i did trying to fill in the edges! Once the top is smooth, guess what? It goes back in the fridge for a few minutes to harden up.

Once hardened slightly, pour the sprinkles over the top, gently brushing/tapping the excess away. And voila! A sparkly lemony cake, fit for a thank you!