I slept in til noon!  Isn’t that ridiculous!?!  Well maybe not for some, but for someone who rarely wakes up past 7:00am, it’s a miracle!  I must have been pooped from the weekend!  Sadly, I woke up with a sore throat and an overall gross/sore/tired feeling (I consumed several cups of echinacea tea  throughout the day to feel better… not working yet…).

So I lounged around most of the day and read blogs, as promised.  I also watched Pride and Prejudice and proceeded to cry my eyes out.  That movie gets me every time!  Love it!  After a full day of doing nothing, I started to get pretty bored, so naturally I decided to bake, because let’s face it, I would.

Lemon Cake

adapted from Raspberry Laced Vanilla Cake

1 1/2 cup cake flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice (or juice of 1 lemon plus enough water/milk to make 1/3 cup)
zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together butter and sugar.  Zest lemon and add to mixture, add lemon juice/water/milk, vanilla, eggs and beat for a few seconds til combined.  Add flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and beat together until combined.

Pour dough into 2 9 inch cake pans (greased and floured), or cupcake pans, or mini loaf pans or whatever other shape (I used mini heart shaped pans).  I baked my heart shaped pans for 15 mins, for a larger cake you’ll probably need about half an hour.

Before or after, make the custard filling.

Homemade Vanilla Custard

adapted from Joy the Baker’s PB Banana Cream Pie

1 1/2 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla
3 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
3 tbsp corn starch
pinch of salt

Heat milk and vanilla in a sauce pan on low heat to prevent burning (stir occasionally).  In the meantime, in a bowl mix together egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch and salt.  Once the milk starts to simmer, stir in a small amount (about 1/3 cup should be fine) of the milk to your egg mixture.  Then add the egg mixture to the rest of your milk.  Stir constantly for about 5-10 minutes until thick.  Put in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap (lay plastic wrap on the custard to keep it from forming a weird film/skin/hardened layer) and chill in the fridge.

Super Fruit Buttercream Frosting

1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened
1/2 cup Crofter’s Super Fruit spread (I used the South America Flavor, but any type of jam, especially raspberry would be delicious)
~3 cups powdered sugar

For the frosting, cream together the butter and fruit spread, gradually add powdered sugar until you get your desired consistency.

In addition the the Super Fruit Buttercream, I made a traditional buttercream with just butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and milk.

To assemble the mini cakes (once cakes have cooled), level off the top of each mini cake (or each big cake if you used 9 inch round pans), spread a layer of fruit spread (suggest you microwave it for a few seconds for easy spreading), then a thick-ish layer of custard and press on the second cake layer (repeat if you want to do more than 2 layers).

One of these will go to the fella.  The other three plus the 4 cupcakes are up for grabs.

Well I guess that sufficiently entertained me for a few hours and also made good use of leftovers (had some egg yolks left over from an omelet and milk left over from Pi Day).

These probably would have been a good idea for Valentine’s Day.  Oh well!

Off to bed!  Have a great night!

P.S. In case you’re interested, here are some more pictures from NYC!