A zesty lemon cake for march

I wanted to bake a special cake for my lovely friend Helen's birthday a few days ago (Helen is a marketing whizz who helped redesign both the Halsbeer Farm and Blackdown Yurts websites for me) so I googled 'March birthday cakes' for inspiration. Up popped a gorgeous lemon and primrose cake - it seemed appropriate as I'd only just been sharing pictures of the gorgeous primrose bank along the drive here at Halsbeer in the stunning early Spring sunshine a few days earlier. This cake is perfect for March birthdays, Mother's Day (this year 30th March) and for Easter, any excuse really!

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The original recipe was a Great British Bake Off one, featured on the Great British Food Awards website. Theirs was a monster 4-layer cake - bit overkill for my purposes - so I halved the recipe to make a standard 2-layer cake and I also reduced the time it took by cheating on a couple of steps. Much as I would have loved to make my own lemon and primrose curd and syrup I simply didn't have time so instead I bought a jar of good quality lemon curd and skipped the syrup. The cake didn't suffer for it, it was still moist and zingy. I did decorate it with some primroses and violas (edible) and celandine (not edible) flowers and a few sprigs of herbs that were starting to shoot in the herb garden, specifically a trailing rosemary that was already flowering, lavender and chamomile.    

Ingredients

Cake:
140g ground almonds
120g self-raising flour, sifted
225g unsalted butter, softened (if you only have salted use that but skip the pinch of salt)
225g golden caster sugar
4 eggs
50ml lemon curd yoghurt (if you don't have this I'd use normal yoghurt and a squeeze of lemon juice)
Finely grated zest of 1/2 a lemon
Pinch of salt 
Lemon buttercream: 
115g unsalted butter, softened 
210g icing sugar, sifted
2-3 tbsp good-quality shop-bought lemon curd
Lemon curd: 
120g good-quality shop-bought lemon curd (or if you want to make your own see the recipe link above)
To decorate: 
Edible spring flowers such as primrose and violas
Sprigs of herbs such as thyme, lemon balm, mint, rosemary, chamomile and lavender
Icing sugar, for dusting
Equipment: 
2 x 20cm sandwich tins, greased and base lined with baking paper
Wooden skewer or cocktail stick
​Medium piping bag with large star shaped nozzle.

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method

Heat the oven to 180C/Fan 160C/Gas 4.
Stir the ground almonds and flour together in a bowl. Beat the butter and sugar together with a stand mixer or a hand mixer until pale and creamy.

Add the eggs one at a time beating well between each. Add a spoonful of the flour and almond mixture if it starts to curdle. Stir in the yoghurt then fold in the almond and flour mixture with the lemon zest and salt (if using unsalted butter).

Divide the mixture evenly between the two pre-prepared tins and spread level. Bake for 30-35 minutes on the middle shelf until risen and you get a nice bounce back from the surface when lightly pressed and/or a skewer or cocktail stick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow to cool completely. 

Make the buttercream by beating the butter until pale and creamy. Add the icing sugar a little at a time, then add the lemon curd. I used that in preference to milk to slacken the mixture off a bit while also imparting the lemon flavour. You want enough to give a soft, pipeable consistency and a great zingy taste. Spoon the buttercream into a piping bag.

Place the first cake on a board or cake plate, then pipe a ring of buttercream around the edge of the sponge (I did two rings). Spoon lemon curd into the centre and spread evenly. Place the other sponge on top and decorate with a ring of piped blobs around the edge. Decorate with flowers and dust with icing sugar to finish.

Enjoy, preferably with friends or family in the Spring sunshine.