Lemon & Blueberry Layer Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese Butter Cream & White Chocolate Chips.
A bit of a treat, this cake, yet as with all of my bakes, not difficult to get together.
It has everything.
Lemon, blueberries and chocolate chips. It’s light, it’s fresh, while the cream cheese buttercream makes it luxurious too.
There are so many tips with this recipe, and the tips can be applied to other bakes you love. So, scroll down to the end of the recipe before you start baking.
Go on, give it a go and enjoy your sweet life!
A slice of cake with everything in it.
What You Need
Cake
380g Fresh Blueberries – See Tip Box
360g Self Raising Flour – Plus extra for tin preparation
340g Castor Sugar
300ml Soured Cream
125ml Vegetable Oil
115g Cooking Margarine – Plus extra for tin preparation - See Tip Box
4 Large Eggs – Room Temperature
Zest from 4 Large Lemons
2 ½ tsp Baking Powder
2 tbs Lemon Juice
1 tsp Vanilla Extract – See Tip Box
Decorate the top with more grated lemon zest , a good handful of fresh blueberries and more white chocolate chips.
Butter Cream
700g Icing Sugar
250g Butter – Softened to room temperature
200g Full Fat Cream Cheese – See Tip Box
Zest from 2 Large Lemons
Room temperature cream cheese and butter
Decoration and Assembly
100g White Chocolate Chips - Or more if that’s your taste– See Tip Box
70g Fresh Blueberries
Zest From 1 Large Lemon
Place the cakes upside down to have a level top of the cake.
How It’s Done
Prepare Tins
Heat the oven to 180c – See Tip Box
Find 4 X 8’ shallow cake tins (or 2 x 8” deep cake tins) and rub some margarine all around the inside of each, making sure to get some in the corners. – Try to make the layer as even as possible.
Put a little flour into each of the tins, and tip it around until there is a coating of flour over each of the tins – tap out any excess flour – again, trying to give the inside an even coat of flour.
Cut out a circle of non-stick baking parchment and place one circle in the bottom of each tin – set them aside until needed – See Tip Box
The lemon zest into the cake batter adds a lot of flavour.
Make the Cake Batter
Place the room temperature vegetable oil and the room temperature margarine into the bowl of an electric mixer, and using a beater attachment, beat until they emulsify and become creamy – See Tip Box
Add the castor sugar and, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally, beat for 3 minutes.
With the machine running on a medium speed, add the eggs one at a time, mixing each one in completely before adding the next.
Add the soured cream, vanilla extract and the lemon zest, and beat for another 3 minutes, scraping down the sides a few times.
Once the time is up, switch off the machine.
In a separate bowl, place the flour and baking powder. Give it a mix to combine.
Pour the 380g of fresh blueberries in with the flour and give it all a good mix so that the blueberries are completely covered in flour – See Tip Box
Mixing the blueberries in with the flour helps them to not sin to the bottom of the cake.
Remove the bowl from the electric mixer that has the wet mixture, and tip the flour and blueberries into the wet mixture.
Pour the lemon juice on top of the flour mixture, and using a large metal spoon or silicone spatula, carefully fold the flour mixture into the wet – See Tip Box
Stop just before the mixture is really smooth – Don’t over mix - See Tip Box
Divide the cake batter between the prepared cake tins and very gently level the top – See Tip Box
Fill the tins 2/3rds full and gently level the tops
Place the tins onto a middle shelf in the pre heated oven, and bake until the middle of the cake bounces back when gently touched with a finger, or, if a toothpick is poked into the centre of the cake, it comes out with no batter on it, and the cakes are a light golden brown in places.
Remove all the baked cakes from the oven, and let the cakes cool completely, in the tins, for a few hours before trying to remove them or trying to assemble the cake – See Tip Box
Light and creamy buttercream
Make the Butter Cream
Place the softened room temperature butter and the room temperature cream cheese into the clean bowl of an electric mixture.
Using a beater attachment, let the machine run on medium speed for 3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally.
Add the vanilla extract and let it beat for another minute, again scraping down the bowl.
Dump the icing sugar into the bowl, with the mixer on a low to medium speed, let it beat for at least three minutes, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl so none of the icing sugar gets left behind.
Add the lemon zest and beat for one more minute, again scraping down the sides of the bowl.
Set it aside until needed – if using the buttercream straight away, let it sit at room temperature, and if using it the following morning, store it covered in the fridge – See Tip Box
Scrape the buttercream on and off until it looks as you want it to
Assembly
Get a cake plate or a 10” cake board and place it on a turn table if you have one.
Put a little dollop of the buttercream in the middle of the cake plate of cake board.
Use a thin sharp knife or an off set spatula, and run it around the inside of each of the cake tins to loosen each cake from the tin.
Pull of the paper from the bottom of one of the cakes, and place it, upside down, on top of the dollop of buttercream, very gently pressing down to secure it.
Add a large dollop of the buttercream to the top of the cake and using an off set spatula, level it out – it doesn’t matter if the buttercream goes over the sides.
Set aside 50g of the chocolate chips for decoration at the end.
From the remaining 50g of chocolate chips, sprinkle a few over the buttercream.
Repeat with the rest of the cake layers until there are four cake layers (or two if using deep cake tins).
(Each layer should be interspaced with a thin layer of buttercream sprinkled with white chocolate chips.)
A handful of white chocolate chips in each layer
Once all the layers are in place, put the remaining buttercream on the top of the stack of cakes, and using an off set spatula, spread it over the edge of the cake and down the sides.
Keep moving the buttercream around the sides of the cake and over the top until there is a thin layer of the buttercream around the edges and over the top.
Use the spatula to smooth and level the buttercream all over the cake, taking time to scrape off and put back the buttercream until it looks the way you would like it to.
Once you’re happy with the way the buttercream looks and the thickness of the buttercream, begin to decorate.
Layers of yumm!
Decorate the top
Grate the lemon zest all over the top pf the cake.
Pile up the blueberries in the centre, and pile the remaining white chocolate chips on top of the blueberries.
Serve at room temperature but store in the fridge when not eating
Decoration doesn’t have to be complicated.
Tip Box
Emulsifying the Room Temperature Margarine and oil – Emulsify in this case is when the oi and butter comes together to form a creamy mixture. This will only happen if both are at room temperature. If they are colder, the emulsifying process won’t happen and the mixture will probably look split
Margarine Vs Butter – As a rule of thumb, I always use cooking margarine for cakes and butter, if I’m baking biscuits or cookies. In my opinion, using butter for cakes, make the cake heavier than if I used margarine.
Lemons – Because I always use the zest of the lemons I like to used unwaxed lemons. Who wants to have wax in their cake!?
Lemon juice in the mixture – If lemon juice is put into the cake mixture too early, there’s a chance that the chemical reaction it makes will split the batter and oil mixture. So, my tip to stop this, is to add the lemon juice at the same time as the flour. So pour the lemon juice on top of the flour and fold it in.
Vanilla Extract – It may sound strange to add vanilla extract to a lemon cake, but vanilla is magic in a cake. As a stand alone flavour it’s great, but when added to cakes with a different primary flavour, it just enhances and highlights the flavour, In this case the lemon flavour.
Blueberries – 1) Always fresh blueberries in this cake, they seem to work the best.
2) A tip to stop the fresh berries from sinking straight to the bottom of the cake, is to coat them in the flour mixture and fold them into the cake by hand along with the flour.
Don’t over mix the batter
Don’t over mix – Over mixing the dry ingredients into the wet, will result in a tough cake. So, I never use a machine to beat flour into the wet mixture. I always gently fold the flour in.
How much in a tin? – A tin 2/3rds full is usually the right amount of batter to out in to a tin. Any more and there’s areal chance the cake will o er spill in the oven, and any less and the cake will most likely be way to thin.
Lining the tin – I’ve never as yet, had a cake stick in the tin, and the way I do this is by following the method my mother used all her life.
First, make sure there’s an even thin layer of margarine or butter all over the inside of whichever tin you’re using.
After this, put a little flour in the tin and tip the tin around until there a nice even layer of flour over the margarine. Tap the tin to let any excess flour fall out. The last step is to cut out a circle of non-stick baking paper to fit the bottom of each tin.
Circle of non-stick baking parchment- My easy tip to cut out circle, is just a way that save me a little cutting time.
1) Fold the parchment over, so that the tin can sit comfortably on the folded paper. If two circles are needed, fold over once, if four circles needed, fold the paper over three times.
2) Sit the tin on top of the folded paper and sit one of the tins on the folded paper.
3) Draw around the tin.
4) Once the circle has been drawn, remove the tin and holding the folded paper together, cut around the drawn circle.
5) With just one circle cut, you should be left with the enough circles for the tins.
Fold, draw the circle and cut out.
Heat the oven – It’s important that the oven is heated long before the cake batter is ready to go on the oven.
Once the dry ingredients are folded into the wet ingredients, (the self raising flour and the baking powder into the egg and oil mixture) a chemical reaction starts.
If the batter isn’t put in the oven as soon as the flour mixture is incorporated into the wet, the cake will not bake as it should, because the chemical reaction needed to make the cake rise, will have happened outside of the heated oven instead if inside.
Baking – Each oven is different so adjust the baking time accordingly.
White Chocolate Chips – I used white chocolate chips just because I had them in my pantry, but se dark or milk chocolate chips if that’s what you have.
Cream Cheese – in my experience, using low calorie cream cheese never works when I make cream cheese buttercream.
Buttercream- If using the buttercream more than an hour after making, use a wooden spoon to give it a good beating. This will break up any bubbles that may have formed and bring it back into a smooth buttercream.
Delicious layers
