Yellow Cake with Lemon Buttercream

 This yellow cake is  the "All-Occasion Downy Yellow Butter Cake" from Rose Levy Berenbaum's 1988 classic Cake Bible. Instructions below aren't exactly as in the book.  It's a 9-inch two-layer cake. Each baked layer is about 1-1/4 inches high. It cuts nicely into 12 pieces.

I filled the layers and frosted the cake with Lemon Buttercream, piped a few flowers on top, and pressed the sides with toasted almond flakes. I was trying to replicate the amazing lemon buttercream almond-encrusted cake from the long-gone Edelweiss Bakery in Scarborough. 

My mom, who used to like the Edelweiss Bakery cake, pronounced my version as "Too sweet, the frosting is like lemon candy. I'd rather have a nice plain pound cake."

I really liked it. Next time I might try to pipe a ridge of buttercream on the top edge of the bottom layer and fill in the center with lemon pie filling. The buttercream edging should keep the lemon filling from oozing out between the layers so I can frost the sides smoothly.

I hesitated to use this recipe for years because it uses 6 egg yolks and the instructions seemed unusual. You don't cream the butter and sugar first and then add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, you add butter to the flour/sugar mixture. Rose Berenbaum had some good reasons for preparing cake batter this way. 

When I did it the flour-sugar-egg-butter made a clumpy dough before the milk and egg was added. All ingredients were at room temperature, I'd left the butter on the counter. I ended up mixing the batter longer than the instructions stated. It still didn't look like the butter creamed sufficiently. I saw bits of butter in the finished batter when I poured it into the pans.

Since then, CBC Marketplace investigated butter due to consumer complaints that butter is no longer softening properly for baking. They found: farmers have started feeding palm oil to cows as part of their diet. So for a perfect cake, you might need to use premium butter from grass-fed cows.

Happily, the cake baked nicely and tasted so good, four of us ate the 12 servings in two days. And who knows, after the Pandemic is over, I may get to go visit Amy, who is raising chickens right now, and she might have lots of eggs.

Rose Berenbaum's Yellow Butter Cake

• 3.5 fluid ounces egg yolk (about 6 large egg yolks)
• 1 cup milk
• 2-1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 3 cups sifted white cake flour (not unbleached or self-rising)
• 1-1/2 cups white granulated sugar OR 2 cups maple sugar*
• 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp  salt
• 6 oz or 170 grams unsalted softened butter (at room temperature)

Prepare:

1. Set out ingredients except eggs on the counter and let stand 1-2 hours to reach room temperature.
2. Separate the eggs when they are cold from the fridge. Since egg yolks differ in size, you need to put the yolks in a liquid measuring cup, stir them up and keep adding yolk until you have 3 1/2 oz. of egg yolk. Put the separated egg whites in a covered bowl in the fridge to use to make coconut macaroons later.
3. Grease two 9-inch by 1-1/2 inch cake pans.
4. Line the bottoms with parchment paper. Grease the paper.
5. Flour the pans, bottoms and sides.
6. Separate the eggs when they are cold and refrigerate
7. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Measure and Mix:

1. Combine 3-1/2 oz. egg yolk, 1/4 cup milk, 2-1/4 tsp. vanilla in a medium bowl. Set aside.
2. Sift the cake flour and spoon into a dry measuring cup, then level.
3. Put 3 cups cake flour into large mixer bowl.
4. With mixer on low speed, add 1-1/2 cups sugar, 1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp baking powder, 3/4 tsp salt.
5. Mix another 30 seconds to blend.
6. Add 6 oz softened unsalted butter and 3/4 cup milk.
7. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened.
8. Turn stand mixer to medium speed (hand mixer to high speed), beat 1-1/2 minutes.
9. Stop and scrape down sides of bowl with a spatula.
10. Add a third of the set-aside egg mixture, beat 20 seconds, scrape down sides.
11. Add another third of the egg mixture, beat 20 seconds, scrape down sides.
12. Add the rest of the egg mixture, beat 20 seconds or until mixed in.

Bake:

1. Scrape the batter into the prepared pans, filling each half full.
2. Smooth the surface with the spatula.
3. Place pans on centre rack of preheated 350 degree F oven and bake 25 to 35 minutes.
4. Check after 25 minutes: cake is done when a tester inserted near the center comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the center. Cakes should start to shrink from the sides of the pans only after removal from the oven.
5. Let cakes cool in the pans on racks for 10 minutes.
6. Loosen the sides with a small metal spatula and invent onto greased wire racks.
7. Reinvert so that the tops are up to prevent splitting.
8. Cool completely.

Keeps, wrapped airtight, 2 days at room temperature, 5 days refrigerated, 2 months frozen.

Texture is most perfectly moist the day it is baked.

*Maple Cake Variation: Use 2 cups of 300 grams maple sugar. Frost with maple buttercream and encrust sides of cake with coarsely chopped toasted walnuts.

Lemon Buttercream: see the recipe on this blog.