Lemon Debutante Cake

This Lemon Debutante cake was the very first recipe I wanted to try from my Miette cook book.  I fell in love with the clean lines and simplicity of the overall appearance. 

Then I read the actual recipe.  Yeah.  Anything but simple.  This cake calls for lemon curd, hot milk cake, lemon simple syrup, and lemon buttercream.  Oh and a pale yellow pastillage flower.  Sure, why not?

Now keep in mind that I have never actually made any of these things before.

The lemon curd needed to be made first as it needs time to set in the fridge before assembly. 

After the cake was baked, cooled, and cut into layers I began making the buttercream.  This recipe has you cook sugar and a touch of water to 248 degrees then add it very slowly to egg whites, all in the stand mixer on high.  The copious amount of butter is added at the end, only after the egg white mixture has cooled to room temperature.  Then you add a few tablespoons of the lemon curd to the buttercream and voila!  The best icing you've ever tasted.

This results in a buttercream so light, so delicate, that it melts on your tongue almost immediately.  I wish I had remembered to take a photo of what it looked like after 10 minutes on high speed.  It was almost coming out of the bowl.  Hands down the only kind of frosting I will use from here on out.  Well worth the effort.

Each layer had a barrier of buttercream and lemon curd with more buttercream piped on top of the curd.  This results in a very moist, very flavorful cake.  My layers of cake really need to be thicker to support the filling though.  Oh well, live and learn.

After the cake was all assembled I applied a crumb coat with buttercream then let it set for 30 minutes in the fridge.  Then the final presentation layer of buttercream was applied.  The white scalloped center and flower were made with gum paste and gel food color.  But that's another post.

  (Hang in for the montage of photos you're about to see, I am quite proud of my "first" cake!)

Of course, as beautiful as I think it is, I can still see all of the things I didn't do right that will inevitable get better with practice; piping borders, even cake layers, even frosting layers, smooth buttercream application....I could go on.  All in all I'm pretty satisfied with my first attempt.  Miette swears that if one can master the Lemon Debutante cake, one can master wedding cakes.  Not a bad business idea...

And now, for one last shot....

Eeek!  You can really see the flaws in that one!  :)