Work's been pretty hectic recently - as an accountant, there are times of the year when the workload gets a bit crazy! Thankfully, however, that time has just about passed, and to celebrate I really wanted to try out a new type of cake. This was inspired by a striped cake I saw in a Tesco magazine (their recipes are really good!) - I adapted the flavours of the cake, and the buttercream is my own creation, but I think the overall look is pretty :)
The stripe effect is made by making sponges in trays, so they are akin to Swiss rolls. I flavoured one with lemon zest, and the other, I tried to give it a strawberry kick with some strawberry conserve. The strawberry flavour was pretty delicate though, so next time, I might try adding pureed strawberries instead.
I made the buttercream ruffles using a tip similar to the Wilton 406:
The cake isn't as tricky to make as it looks, so give it a go!
Makes one 20cm cake
Ingredients:
For the lemon sponge:
- 130g (1 cup) plain flour
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
- 4 eggs
- 35g (2 tbsp) butter, melted
- 85g (2/3 cup) caster sugar + 1 tbsp for sprinkling
For the lemon syrup:
- Juice of 2 lemons
- 75g (3/4 cup) icing sugar
For the strawberry sponge:
- 130g (1 cup) plain flour
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
- 4 eggs
- 35g butter (2 tbsp), melted
- Pink food colouring (I used a concentrated gel)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp good quality strawberry conserve
- 85g (2/3 cup) caster sugar + 1 tbsp for sprinkling
For the strawberry topping:
- 2 tbsp good quality strawberry jam
For the lemon buttercream:
- 300g (1 & 1/4 cups) butter, very soft
- 600g (6 cups) icing sugar, sifted
- 2-3 tbsp lemon juice
- Pink food colouring
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180c (160c fan)/355f/gas mark 4. Grease the base of a 23 x 33cm swiss roll tin/baking tray, and line with baking parchment.
2. Make the lemon sponge by pouring the eggs, lemon zest and sugar into a mixing bowl. Whisk for around 5 minutes (I used a stand mixer but an electric hand whisk would work fine) until the mixture has tripled in volume, and become very pale.
3. Sift over the plain flour and baking powder, and pour the melted butter around the edge of the mixture. Gently fold in, being careful to knock as little of the air out of the mixture as possible.
4. Pour into the prepared baking tray, and tilt the pan to evenly spread the mixture across the tray. Bake for around 10 minutes, until golden on top and springy to the touch.
5. Halfway through the cooking time, prepare the lemon syrup by pouring the lemon juice and icing sugar into a small pan. Place on a low heat and bring to a simmer.
6. Simmer for 2-3 minutes until the icing sugar is clear and the mixture is syrupy.
7. Once the sponge has baked, take it out of the oven, and use a pastry brush to brush over the lemon syrup. Place a sheet of baking parchment on your work surface, and then sprinkle over 1 tbsp of caster sugar.
8. Turn the sponge out onto the sugared baking parchment, and gently peel off the parchment stuck to the base of the sponge. From a short-end, roll the sponge (with the greaseproof paper) to a tight swiss roll, and leave to cool fully.
9. Repeat the same steps for the strawberry sponge, except instead of lemon zest in the sponge, add vanilla extract, strawberry conserve and pink food colouring to the eggs and sugar, and then whisk this mixture until tripled in volume.
10. Whilst the strawberry sponge is baking, make the topping by gently heating the strawberry conserve with 3 tbsp water, stirring regularly. Bring to a simmer and cook for 2-3 minutes.
11. Once out of the oven, spread over the strawberry syrup, then turn out onto sugared baking parchment, and roll as previously.
12. Whilst the cakes cool, make the buttercream by beating the butter, icing sugar, and lemon juice together until well combined, light and fluffy. I used the whisk attachment on my stand mixer and ended up with a fluffy soft buttercream that worked really well.
13. Divide the buttercream evenly into two bowls. Add pink colouring to one half of the buttercream and beat in.
14. Carefully unroll both sponges. Cut in half lengthways.
15. Take one of the lemon sponge halves. Spread with a thin layer of the pink lemon buttercream, then roll from a short side to make a swiss roll.
16. Take one of the strawberry halves, and spread with another thin layer of the pink buttercream. Wrap this around the rolled lemon sponge (effectively continuing the spiral).
17. Repeat with the remaining lemon and strawberry halves.
18. Cover the sides and top of the cake gently with a thin layer of the white buttercream. This acts as a crumb coat and should help stop crumbs from escaping into the outside buttercream layer.
19. Refrigerate for 15 minutes, or until the buttercream doesn't stick to your finger when pressed lightly.
20. Prepare a piping bag by adding a Wilton 406/ruffle tip to a piping bag, and trimming off the end. Fill with the pink buttercream.
21. Starting at the base of the cake, start piping ruffles by having the wide end of the nozzle pointing downwards, and angling the piping nozzle - this is by no means something I'm expert in, but I angled my tip slightly downwards so that the bottom of the nozzle was about 30 degrees away - I'd recommend checking out youtube for videos on this bit :)
22. When you only have about a quarter of pink buttercream left, add half of the white buttercream and continue piping the ruffles around the cake - this will give you a slight ombre effect. Alternatively, you could use a new piping bag with a clean piping nozzle if you don't want this effect.
23. Continue piping up the sides of the cake, and then, starting from the centre on top of the cake, pipe concentric circles - again there are some really good youtube videos showing this really clearly.
24. Place in the fridge until the buttercream has set (10-15 minutes).
25. Enjoy!
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