Charlie's Iced Lemon Curd Layer Cake

I used Delia's recipe as a basis for this cake but modified a few things here and there!

Ingredients:

For the cake:

Grated zest of 1 lemon

1 tbsp lemon juice

175g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

175g butter

175g caster sugar

3 large eggs

2 x sandwich tins greased and lined

For the lemon curd:

Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon

75g caster sugar

2 large eggs

50g butter

For the icing:

Zest 1 lemon

2-3 tsp lemon juice

50g sifted icing sugar

Cake Method:

Now this is where I deviate from the recipe (already I know!). Delia says to just weigh all the ingredients and use an electric whisk to combine. I am a bit old school I'm afraid and did it the old fashioned way by combining the sugar with the eggs and beating until creamy. I then added the lemon zest, juice and the eggs a little a time. When the mixture looked like it would curdle I added a little bit of flour. After all the eggs had been combined I added the rest of the flour and the baking powder.

Bake in preheated oven (170 degrees celsius) for 35 minutes.

I left the cakes overnight to thoroughly cool and made the lemon curd and icing on the Wednesday night so it was nice and fresh - you can of course make it all at once and while the cakes are cooling make the curd.

Curd Method:

Put sugar and grated lemon zest in a bowl, whisk the lemon juice with the eggs and then pour this over the sugar.

Add the butter (cubed) and place the bowl over a simmering pan of water.

Stir frequently until thickened - I did leave the curd for quite a while before I gave it some attention and it was fine! It took about 20-25 minutes to thicken.

When the cakes are completely cool sandwich together with the lemon curd. (With the leftover curd I suggest dipping some biscuits in to it....it was very yummy!)

Icing:

(I didn't zest the lemon as I don't have a zester that gives long strips - hence the little lemon slices!)

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl and slowly add lemon juice until smooth and runny.

Leave to stand for 5 minutes and then spread over the cake with a knife. I have to say I added more icing sugar than the recipe suggested because it just looked way too runny to my

un-trained eyes and it still ran all over the blooming cake!

As I didn't have nice long strips of lemon zest I used the little lemon pieces for decoration.