Lemon Cream Cake

Although I have always liked to cook and bake, I never thought I could cook for large groups like the 2nd Sunday Brunch or fundraising dinners we have had at St. John the Apostle MCC Church in Fort Myers, Florida. When I first joined St. Johns I volunteered to help serve brunch, never thinking that someday I would be creating menus and executing meals for groups as large as 80 people. It still amazes me that I can pull it off at a reasonable price, with good quality and taste, satisfying most people. I do struggle with individual needs such as gluten-free, nut-free, vegetarian, etc. I work with a simple home kitchen with usually a staff of one—me! (My husband John does dishwashing, taste-testing, delivering, helping set-up, serving, cleaning, and generally keeping me sane, for which I am very, very thankful!)

I am grateful that God has given me a talent that I did not know I had. And I am humbled by the words of praise that come from satisfied diners. It can often take days of planning, deciding, modifying, purchasing, fixing, delivering and serving a meal that is over in about an hour. The dinner itself has an ethereal quality about it. What took hours to prepare is gone within minutes. I am lucky if I take a photo of the end result and often I don’t--to my regret.

Lemon Cream Cake

I got the idea to make a lemon cream cake for the Lip-Schtick dinner, a church fundraising event, after having a piece of Italian Limoncello Cake at Bruno’s of Brooklyn Italian Eatery restaurant in downtown Fort Myers. If you haven’t been there yet, I highly recommend it. I don’t normally cook with alcohol so had to find a substitute. The Dickinson’s Lemon Curd worked nicely. If I had the time, I would search out a recipe for lemon curd on the Internet and make it from scratch, but Dickinson’s is very nice and it certainly is a timesaver.

Adam’s Italian Lemon Cream Cake

1 15.25-ounce box Betty Crocker Super Moist Lemon Cake Mix

3 eggs

1/2 cup oil         

1 cup cold water

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 10-ounce jar of Dickinson’s Lemon Curd (or you can make your own)

2 cups heavy whipping cream

2 good sized tablespoons of confectioners’ sugar (sweet to your preferred taste)

1 8-ounce container of mascarpone cream cheese

1 and 1/2 teaspoons lemon flavoring.

Canned whipping cream

Jelly lemon pieces (Optional) (I found them on Amazon)

Directions

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and flour 3 9-inch baking pans or use a baking spray with flour. If you only have 2 pans, will have to reserve some batter and re-use one baking pan.

Prepare cake mix as directed adding 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest to the ingredients. Divide 3 equal portions and spread in cake pans. Bake approximately 15 to 20 minutes until lightly browned. Do not overbake!

Remove from oven and allow to cool on rack for at least 10 minutes. Using a cookie sheet or big plate lined with parchment paper, flip the cake over and out of the baking pans. Allow to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for about an hour until chilled and firm.

When cool, spread about a 1/3 of a cup of the lemon curd on each cake layer.

Whip the cream until it starts to come to soft peaks. Add confectioners’ sugar, lemon flavoring and mascarpone, and continue to beat until hard peaks form. Do not overbeat.

You have a couple of options at this point. You can spread the cream equally on top of the lemon curd on the bottom and middle layers which is what I do, or you can reserve some of the cream and frost the sides of the cake with the reserved cream.

Put in refrigerator and chill about 4 hours or overnight before serving. This cake keeps well in the refrigerator.

Cut into serving size slices and place slices on their side. Spritz some canned whipping cream on each slice, then garnish with a piece of optional lemon jelly candy.

This cake is very rich so small slices will go far.

For Easter 2023, I made this cake for my family with an Easter update. Enjoy!

Easter 2016

Polish and Ukrainian Easter Eggs (Pysanki) on my Easter Table.

I enjoy displaying my pysanky (Easter Eggs), some Polish, most Ukrainian, a couple new this year. In my early 20's I bought the dyes, the beeswax, and the stylus, and created several eggs of my own. Some were in the traditional style, but I also branched out and did some modern designs as well. The process was very tedious, painstaking, and time-consuming. Sadly, I lost my entire collection in one of my moves overseas. I could never create them again today; my hands are not still enough to make the tiny straight lines and my eyes would never be strong enough to keep everything straight. Today, I simply enjoy collectingpysanky and add a few to my collection every year. Every area in the Slavic world has their own style of eggs, I wish I could find samples of all of them.

Home-made shrink-wrapped pysanky on my Easter table.

Preparing "pysanky" Easter eggs.

I've also discovered a neat trick for simulating pysanky on my Easter table. You can buy psyanky "sleeves" wrap them over hard-boiled eggs, dip in boiling water for about 5 seconds and you have instant pysanky! You can't save them, but they sure do look pretty on an Easter table.

I bought my package of sleeves online from the Polish Art Center in Hamtramck, Michigan. Here is the link: www.polartcenter.com. 

When we visited my grandmother in Detroit for Easter in the 1950s and 60s, we would always have cake after our traditional Polish breakfast of Easter soup. There would always be Polish poppy seed coffee cake, sometimes a cake made by my Aunt Hattie in the shape of a lamb and covered in coconut, or, my favorite, a cake from Sander's Bakery in Detroit. It would be a yellow cake with "buttercream" icing garnished with finely crushed hazelnuts. The icing was very light and smooth. A "nest" of green-colored coconut with a couple of chocolate malted milk Easter eggs would complete the cake.

Sander's No Butter, No Cream "Buttercream" Easter Cake!

My mother saved a recipe for the icing she found on the "Bob Allison's Ask Your Neighbor" radio program which still, after 50 years, is on the air in the Detroit area. Click here to go to their website. What's interesting about the recipe for the buttercream icing is that it does not contain any butter or cream! I've tweaked the recipe for the cake by adding orange zest and flavoring, and sometimes I substitute toasted sliced almonds in place of the hazelnuts, but the icing itself is always the same recipe.

Sander’s Easter Cake with Buttercream Icing

1 package Duncan Hines butter yellow cake mix

2 teaspoons grated orange rind

1/2 teaspoon orange flavoring

2 cups hazelnuts

Toast hazelnuts and remove skins. Chop finely in a food processor.

Bake cake as directed on the package adding the grated orange peel and flavoring to the batter before beating.

When cool, frost with Sander’s Buttercream Icing.

Gently pat hazelnuts on the side of the cake.

If desired, decorate with a “nest” of coconut dyed green and candy Easter eggs or jelly beans.

Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Sander’s Buttercream Icing

1 stick margarine

1/2 cup Crisco shortening

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup milk, lukewarm

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Cream together the margarine and Crisco shortening. Add sugar, and then gradually add milk.

Beat on medium high speed for at least 15 minutes. For about the first 14 minutes the mixture will be very watery until suddenly the icing will congeal. Continue beating for a few minutes or until the icing is smooth.

Chill the icing for about an hour before icing the cake.

Note: If you can't find hazelnuts, sliced toasted almonds may be substituted instead.