Lemon Gateau Recipe

by Cake and Cookie recipes on August 13th, 2012 · without comments

Slice of Lemon Gateau Sponge Cake

A light lemon sponge cake with lemon curd filling and covered in lemon cream.

Ingredients

For the cake

140 g 5 oz plain flour 25g cornstarch 2 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 140 g (5 oz) sugar Zest and juice of 1 large lemon 2 eggs, separated 75 ml (3 fl oz) groundnut oil (corn oil or sunflower oil will also work) 75 ml (3 fl oz) water

For the filling and covering

275 ml (½ pt) double cream or whipping cream Home made lemon curd (see recipe here: Home-made Lemon Curd Cake Recipe)

Lemon Gateau Recipe

Grease two 18 cm (7 inch) sandwich tins. Line the bottoms with greaseproof paper and grease that as well.

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F or Gas mark 4 or 160°C fan oven).

Sift the flour and cornstarch into a large bowl. Stir in the sugar, baking powder, and salt.

In a jug or smaller bowl mix together the oil, water and egg yolks.

Add this liquid plus the lemon juice to the dry ingredients and beat well. I recommend using an electric hand whisk.

In another bowl whisk the egg whites until they form peaks when you remove the whisk. I use an electric hand whisk (with blades washed from the earlier whisking) and find only a couple of minutes of whisking is needed.

Transfer the whisked egg whites to the main bowl of mixture. The whisked egg whites should just slide out of the bowl as one piece. Add the lemon zest, then fold the zest and egg whites into the rest of the mixture.

Divide the mixture equally between the two tins. The mixture is quite runny, so you'll probably want to pour it rather than spoon it. Cook in the center of the oven for 40 minutes.

When cooked you should be able to insert a skewer into the cake and it come out clean. If it comes out sticky, cook for a little longer.

Cool the cakes in the tins for 10 minutes, then turn them out onto a wire rack and leave to cool. Remove the greaseproof paper from the bottoms of the cakes as well.

When cooled make the lemon curd (see the Home-made Lemon Curd Cake Recipe for ingredients and instructions). Turn one of the sponges upside-down, and spread it with a good amount of lemon curd. Place the other sponge on top.

Whip up the cream until it thickens (a few minutes with an electric hand whisk). Add the rest of the lemon curd to the cream, and whip this in. Scrape off any bits of lemon zest that have got stuck to the whisk blades and add them back into the lemon cream. Then cover the top and sides of the cake with the lemon cream.

I recommend leaving the cake in the fridge overnight for the cream to solidify a bit more before serving.