RMJcar's eatings: Lemon Meringue Cake

Original Recipe: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/lemon-meringue-cake?xid=pinsharebar

I made this for a friend's birthday and was pretty happy with how it came out. This isn't the easiest recipe and I wouldn't recommend it to beginners or those without stand-mixers. All the ingredients are listed in the original recipe.

0. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and grease the two 9" cake rounds. I like to grease pans for cake by spraying non-stick spray (Pam), sprinkling AP flour around the pan, then tapping out all the excess flour.

1. Take the 3 sticks of butter out ahead of time since the recipe called room temperature butter. Leaving out butter ahead of time may seem like an extra nuisance, but it really helps when you combine the butter with the rest of the ingredients. In recipes that call for cold butter, ignore this piece of advice. The recipe also called for the cake eggs to be at room temperature, but I do not have a strong opinion on eggs... yet.

2. When you bake with a lot of ingredients that get mixed at different times, it really helps to have all the ingredients out ahead of time so you are not scrambling to find something, especially for recipes where time is the essence.

2.1 I put two of the room temperature butter (unsalted!!!, will discuss on a future post) and 2 cups of sugar in the stand-mixer.

2.2 I combined the three cups of cake flour (not ap flour), 1 tablespoon of baking powder (not baking soda), and 1/2 teaspoon of salt in a bowl and stirred it with a whisk.

2.3 The eggs are more difficult. The recipe called for 4 eggs and 4 egg yolks. Place the whole eggs and egg yolks all in the same bowl. An egg separating tutorial will appear in a future post. Keep the leftover egg whites for the meringue. Make sure no egg yolks get in with the egg whites. This will mess up your meringue. That being said, a little bit of egg whites in your egg yolks is not an issue.

2.4 If you don't have a large measuring cup like me, you can pour the 1 cup of milk in a standard drinking glass.

2.5 The teaspoon of vanilla (use the real stuff, not imitation), goes in by itself, so I would just have the vanilla and a teaspoon on standby.

3. Mix the butter and sugar with the paddle attachment (the creaming process) until it goes from this

to this

The recipe said to cream the butter and sugar with the mixer on high for five minutes. You won't need that much time if the butter is at room temperature. Make sure to scrape the butter and sugar off the sides after they cream.

4. While the mixer is on medium-high pour the egg in one yolk at a time. Wait until the egg is incorporated (the batter appears to be uniform in consistency) before you add more yolks.

5. Add the one teaspoon of vanilla and incorporate. Turn off mixer.

Don't forget to scape down the batter on the side of the bowl with a spatula.

6. While the mixer is on low, mix in about 1/3 of the flour mixture, then a third of the milk. Wait until all the ingredients incorporate, but don't wait too long. Over-beating the batter at this stage is a problem. Repeat two more times and scrape down any bits off the side.

7. Scrape the batter equally into the prepared cake rounds. I used a digital food scale to equally distribute the batter. You will need the mixer's bowl again, so clean and dry it once all the batter is out and you scraped the last bit into your mouth. Raw batter is awesome. You might also want to try a little bit of batter before you pour it into the cake rounds to make sure you didn't forget anything.

8. Place the pans in the oven for 35 to 40 minutes. Mine took about 37 minutes. Use the toothpick test to see if the cake is done. When you take the pans out of the oven, let them cool on cooling racks. This allows cool air circulation on the top and the bottom. Don't try to take the cake out until you start assembling the entire cake.

9. While the cake is baking, you can prepare the lemon curd and meringue. Starting with the lemon curd. Separate 9 eggs. Put the egg whites with the eggs whites you separated while making the cake batter. Put the egg yolks in a sauce pan.

10. Whisk the egg yolks that are in the sauce pan. It helps to break the yolks without all the other ingredients in the pan.The stove should still be off.

11. Squeeze the juice of two lemons into a cup. I place a small strainer on top of the cup to make sure no seeds or pulps gets in the the lemon juice. Ain't no one got time for that. If you really don't have time for that, you can buy lemon juice from the store, but it is not as good as the fresh stuff.

12. Whisk in the 1 cup of sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and 1/2 cup of lemon juice. You will have a little bit of lemon juice left for the meringue.

13. Get the ice bath ready. Make sure the ice bath container is flat and wide enough for the sauce pan.

14. Turn the heat on the lemon curd mixture to medium. Don't get inpatient and put the heat on high. Putting the heat on medium ensures that you don't miss the point when your mixture thickens. While the mixture is cooking, whisk constantly. Your arms will hurt. This prevents the bottom of the mixture from turning into scrambled eggs.

14.5 At this time you might want to start boiling about 1 inch of water in a pot that the mixer's bowl fits over. This is for the meringue.

15. The recipe said it will take 5 minutes. At medium heat, it takes a little longer. Before you know it, the mixture will suddenly thicken and you will start seeing little bubbles coming to the surface. Quickly place the pan into the ice bath and whisk every so often while you prepare the meringue. Once the curd is cooled, place some plastic wrap on top of the curd and place it in the fridge until you are ready to assemble the cake.

17. To make the meringue, measure out 1.5 cups of egg whites. You may need to separate a few more eggs depending on how much egg whites you collected previously. Place the egg whites in the mixer's bowl and whisk the egg whites to loosen them. Add in the 2.25 cups of sugar and the 3/4 teaspoons of lemon juice. The lemon juice not only flavors the meringue, but helps stabilized the meringue much like cream of tartar since they are both acidic.

18. By now your pot of water should be boiling. If too much water has evaporated, add some water and wait for the pot to boil again. Place the mixer's bowl with the meringue mixture on top of the boiling water and whisk constantly for about 6 minutes until the sugar is dissolved in the egg whites. Honestly, I think it happened sooner, but it was less obvious figuring out when it was done than the curd. You should not feel any sugar crystals when you are finished.

19. Place the mixer bowl in the stand mixture with the whisk attached and start whipping at medium for 10 minutes

This will give you some time to clean up. Whenever there is downtime during the cooking process, I try to clean as much as possible.

20. After the 10 minute period, the meringue should of cooled and started to gain lots of volume and fluff. Notice how you can see striations in the meringue while it mixes. Increase the speed of the mixture to high for another 15 minutes.

21. While the meringue is whipping, you can start assembling the cake if the cake has cooled. I would recommend layering on top of cardboard cake circles. They make moving your final product much easier. My biggest piece of advice is that you aren't going to layer it perfectly, but it doesn't matter!!! Your going to cover the whole thing in delicious meringue hiding most of the layering imperfections.

Take one of the cake pans and place a cutting board on top. Invert the cake round/cutting board so the cutting board is on the bottom. Giggle the cake round gentle side to side until the cake comes out. If you greased and floured the cake round before adding the batter, it shouldn't take much effort. You might need to slide a knife or offset spatula around the edges if the cake doesn't come out.

21.5 If the cake has an uneven top, try to even it out with a serrated knife, but don't go crazy.

22. With your serrated knife, slice the cake in half so you have two thin circles on top of each other.

22.5 Don't immediately try to move one of the cake layers to where you want to start layering, they are very fragile. Slide one of the cake layers on top of a cutting board or something similar, then slide the cake from the cutting board to where you will start layering. If you have a cake turntable, I would layer on top of that.

23. Using a spatula, gently spread 1/3 of the lemon curd on top. If you are too rough, you will start breaking apart the cake. Leave some space around the edge like you would putting tomato sauce on a pizza. The layers on top will apply pressure spreading the curd to the edge.

Notice the cake scraps in the cake round on the upper right of the picture. That is from step 21.5.

24. Place the other half of your first cake on top of the lemon curd layer using the same method as step 22.5.

25. Repeat step 23.

26. Repeat steps 21- 24 with the other cake.

27. If 15 minutes have gone by, your meringue should be down whisking. It should be glossy and stiff. Using an offset spatula (the thing shown below on the right side of the mixer's bowl), start spreading a thin layer of meringue on the sides. A cake turntable is useful in this case.