Lemon Meringue Cake - Gemma's Bigger Bolder Baking

Hi Bold Bakers! I adore lemon meringue pie and I also love cake. So today we're going to make a little bit of a hybrid of the two and make a lemon meringue cake. So let's get baking. So first things first, as always, this recipe can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com and if you haven't already done so, tap that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any upcoming videos. So what is a lemon meringue cake? It is a fluffy cake with lemon curd in the middle and meringue all around the outside. So it gives you all those lovely components of a pie, but it's a cake. So the cake that we're going to use is my vanilla birthday cake recipe. It's light, it's fluffy, and it works really great for this recipe. The other component we're going to make is lemon curd. It's really easy to make and I'm going to show you how. Into a heavy bottom saucepan, add in your lemon juice, lemon zest, and some sugar. And then just bring it to a gentle simmer. So next we're going to add in a little bit of cornstarch that's mixed with water and we're going to whisk this in. It will help thicken your lemon curd. So as you can see, this mix will thicken up really quickly. This is exactly what we want. So next we're going to add in some room temperature eggs and we're going to whisk them in. Now you want them to be room temperature so that they don't set on your other mix. So when you make lemon curd, you'll actually have egg whites left over, but don't throw them out. We're going to use those to make our meringue later on. So lastly we're going to add in some cold butter. Now you just want to whisk until it's all combined. So lemon curd is one of those things that's great to have in the back of your fridge. A little bit like jam or salted caramel sauce. It goes really well with scones. Okay, that's it. Everything is whisked in, now I'm going to turn off the heat and we're going to pass it through a strainer. Now the reason that we pass it through a strainer is just in case your eggs did cook and you see some white bits in there, do not worry about it because passing them through a strainer will get rid of those. There's always a solution for everything. So this lemon curd will last in your fridge for around a week. This is going to go in between the layers of our cake. I'm going to set this aside now and we're going to get started on our meringue. So in a glass bowl over a pot of simmering water, we're going to add in some sugar. So we're going to follow the sugar with some egg whites and once they go in there, you want to whisk them all together. So these are the egg whites that we had left over from making the lemon curd so we're not wasting anything. So now the reason that we do this step is to cook the egg whites. We're going to get them nice and warm so in case you're worried about eating raw egg whites, you don't have to be. So this step only takes around two minutes or so and you want to stop if you put your finger in there and the egg whites are nice and warm, you're done. So now take your egg whites off the heat and then pour them into your stand mixer. Now if you don't have a stand mixer, you can also use an electric hand mixer. So now we're going to turn on our machine to around a medium-high speed and just whip it up until it's nice and thick and glossy. So this step takes around three to four minutes. You'll notice that it starts to get nice and big like this and double in size. So now when we're at this stage, I'm going to add in a little bit of vanilla extract and a little bit of salt and that will just add nice flavor to your frosting. Okay, so this looks perfect. Do you see how thick that is? This is what we're going for. Now in total, this took around six to seven minutes to whip up. Just keep on going until you get to this consistency. Okay, we've got our lemon curd, we've got our frosting, now we're going to assemble our cake. So my vanilla cake I actually made yesterday because you don't want it really fresh when you go to decorate it, you need it a little bit firmer. Now I have two cakes, I'm going to cut them in half so I get four layers all together and I get a lovely high cake. Because our cakes are made with love and by hand, don't worry if your cake is a little bit wonky, that is totally fine. So next we're going to go in with our lemon curd, as you can see this is nice and thick which makes it perfect for this cake so it doesn't move around too much. Take a dollop of your lemon curd and then just spread it along the top of your cake, leaving a little bit of an edge. So now we're going to take the next layer of cake and put that on top. Now we're going to go ahead and spread even more lemon curd. Now while you're decorating cakes, if you ever feel like this happens to me, if it's kind of leaning a little bit, just get in there and straighten it up with your hands. And then we're just going to continue with the next layers of cake. So now for the top layer of the cake, ironically I saved the bottom. So when you save the bottom of your cake, you get a lovely flat surface so always keep that for putting on top. Okay so this is our cake assembled, now we're going to decorate the outside. Now for those of you who know Bigger Bolder Baking, you know I love meringue so I'm really excited about this. So take a big dollop of your meringue frosting, just move it over the top and let it fall down the sides of the cake. And then with your spatula, go around and create a nice layer. So now just like a crumb coat, you can do a thin layer first, pick up all those loose crumbs and then go back over with even more meringue so you get a lovely clean finish on your cake. Now do not worry about how this looks if you think that it might not look perfect, it's not supposed to, it's a little bit rustic and like I said before, it's homemade. So I covered my cake with frosting and I left a bit of texture around the sides because we're going to take a torch to it and make it nice and crispy and you'll be able to see all of those lovely ripples. So just lightly torch your cake all the way around until it gets a lovely brown color. Just like what you'd get if you toasted marshmallows, the top of a lemon meringue pie, you get that lovely toasty flavor. Now if you don't have a little culinary torch like I do, you can always try and put it under a broiler but you'll only get the top of it kind of toasty, otherwise just leave it plain, it'll still taste really good. So now we have all of these lovely layers, I'm going to cut the cake so you can see what it looks like on the inside. So you have a nice big layer of lemon curd, really thick cake, and you see the frosting on the outside? This is just a fantastic combination. Oh my gosh. The zesty curd, the toasted meringue and the fluffy cake, this is probably one of the biggest and boldest cakes I've made so far. You are going to love this. I really hope you try it and I will see you back here next Thursday for more Bigger Bolder Baking. So far so good. You're ready? Go for it.