Friday Cake Blogging-Lemon Cake With Lemon Curd

Still working my way through the stack of old cooking magazines, today's cake comes from the May 1996 issue of Bon Appetit. The issue is devoted to the cuisine of Ireland and they claim this is a traditional cake (doubtful). Still, it was easy enough to prepare and didn't require any special ingredients save for self-rising flour (I don't know why but the Irish really love their self-rising flour-have a look at an Irish cookbook and you'll see) for which you can substitute (per cup) 1 cup all purpose, 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt.

We weren't even in the mood for cake, yet somehow managed to polish-off half of it. It is really very light, deceptively so, that you don't notice "one more sliver of a slice" adding up to half a cake.

You Will Need:

For the cake:

6 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
¾ plus one tablespoon sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 ¼ cups self-rising flour
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

For the Curd:

2 large eggs
6 tablespoons sugar
6 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
¼ cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 teaspoons packed grated lemon zest
Powdered sugar

Cake-Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease two 8-inch pans and line bottom with parchment. Butter the parchment as well. In a medium bowl, combine butter and sugar until light. Add eggs one at a time beating thoroughly after each. Add the zest and mix well. Add the flour and lemon juice alternately in two additions. Pour into pans and bake 25-28 minutes or until it begins to pull away from sides and a tester comes out clean. Cool 2 minutes in pans on racks, then on racks. When cool, fill with lemon curd and sprinkle top with powdered sugar.

Curd-Whisk eggs and sugar in the top of a double boiler until blended. Add lemon juice, butter and peel. Set over simmering water (not touching) and whisk until the consistency of thick pudding or temperature of 165 degrees F on a thermometer (the recipe says four minutes but mine took about nine). Remove from water, cool and cover with plastic wrap pressed directly onto the surface. Keep chilled until ready to use.