Lemon raspberry birthday cake | Torta di limone e lampone

The annual birthday cake post...

Ingredients: 
4 eggs
2 tbsp lemon curd
1 tsp lemon zest
2 cups milk
1.5 cups butter, softened
3 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups flour
3 cups sugar
2.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Gel food coloring (your choice of colors, for tinting layers)

For filling:
1/2 cup lemon curd
1 cup fresh raspberries, smashed (can substitute berry of your choice; set aside a few for garnishing)

For icing:
4 oz cream cheese
1 tbsp butter, softened
4-5 cups confectionary sugar (okay, I didn't really measure)
1 tbsp lemon curd
1 tsp lemon zest
3 tbsp lemon juice (one lemon should be enough for the whole recipe)

Directions:
1. Prep: Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter 6" or 8" round cake pans and line with circles of parchment paper. (It's okay if you don't have enough pans; the layers bake fairly quickly. It does help to have two ovens.)

Blend eggs, lemon curd, zest, milk and vanilla. Set aside for now.

2. Cream butter and sugar in a mixer until smooth.

3. Slowly add flour, salt and baking powder to butter-sugar mixture.

4. Slowly add egg mixture and mix until fairly smooth, at least 3-4 minutes.

5. Divide batter into three or six bowls, depending on number of layers desired. (Six will be quite thin  bakes beautifully and makes a moist, rich final cake.)

6. Tint each bowl to the desired shade. (I aspired to make a completely ombré cake in one color, but the birthday boy won, so I did two shades each of three "berry" colors - blue, red and purple.)

7. Pour contents of one bowl into one pan, tilting or spreading to distribute evenly. (Again, if you are making six layers, these are thin...no more than 0.5" after baking.)

8. Bake each pan at 350 F for about 15 minutes. Allow to cool.

9. Spread each layer with 1-2 tbsp of lemon curd. For a six-layer cake, spread half the raspberries between the second and third and half between the fourth and fifth layers (so...alternating, lemon only, lemon/raspberry, lemon only, etc.).

10. Whip the icing ingredients until very smooth and frost cake when completely cool.

The story:

Everyone loved this cake except for me! I thought it was too sweet; possibly, I should have erred on the side of less lemon curd in the layers. Here is the inspiration recipe: http://thecakeblog.com/2011/08/blueberry-rainbow-cake.html I made a few modifications - switching egg whites to whole eggs, adding a little lemon curd and zest to the batter, adding raspberries in the layers and adding lemon cream cheese icing (something I would probably leave out next time).

My son originally requested a "blueberry cake." At first, I thought of making him a lemon blueberry coffee cake in this Bundt pan (which does come out looking really awesome), but then I decided to look for something more festive. I love the look of ombré layers (we did something similar for his first birthday). The day before his birthday, I was showing him pictures of various cakes - including this one - when he suddenly said, "I not like blueberry. I want RASPBERRY."

He liked it, I think. 

To see the fate of his second birthday cake, click here.