This recipe for lemon cake filling uses homemade lemon curd that must be made in advance and allowed to cool (lemon curd freezes well therefore can be made in bulk). The trick to making lemon curd is to cook it in a stainless steel bowl that’s set up as a double boiler over a sauce pan.
It will cook slower that way so you only have to stir occasionally (compared to making it directly in the sauce pan, which requires constant attention and can easily lead to over-cooking). If you don’t want to make your own lemon curd, I can recommend the Trader Joe’s kind.
Lemon Pucker is Option #5 in the
Streamlined Layer Cake Filling Menu
Streamlined Cake Filling Method
This recipe is one of 11 cake filling flavors in a streamlined cake menu. All the variations are based on these two simple buttercream recipes that work beautifully both as fillings and frosting. A streamlined menu minimizes the amount of work required to make each cake, which is a terrific time-saver in the kitchen, especially for those who run a bakery business.
Base Recipe
Vanilla Buttercream Cake Frosting & Filling
Components
– Your choice of yellow cake, white cake or pound cake layers
– Stable cream cheese filling
– Lemon zest, freshly grated and/or pure lemon extract
– Lemon curd, homemade or store bought
1. Freshly grate the zest of one lemon. Use a microplane for best results. Add the zest and/or lemon extract to the cream cheese filling until you have achieved your preferred level of tart lemon flavor.
2. Soak the surfaces of the cake layers with lemon curd. Add enough to saturate the entire top and bottom of each layer. Avoid soaking the topmost and bottom most outer surfaces.
3. Build the cake layers in the pan using layer cake filling method. Fill the layers with lemon flavored cream cheese filling.
4. Wrap the filled cake within its pan entirely in plastic wrap.
5. Freeze or chill the cakes until cold. Follow this link to read more about my cake freezing method.
Once it has cooled and set, lemon curd may be used as a cake decoration. It’s shiny and translucent like jelly and pipes as easily as frosting. In the cake above, it was used to dot the center of the flowers.
Suggested Cake Filling Method
My preferred method for assembling layer cakes is to build them inside the baking pan. I recommend watching the videos and reading this entire tutorial on how to fill cakes in the pan.
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Related Tutorial
How to Freeze and Thaw Cakes
Get the Base Recipes
Smooth Buttercream Cake Frosting
Get All 11 Stable Layer Cake Filling Recipes
5 Reasons Why Cake Fillings Bulge
Go Back to the Article’s Introduction
Streamlined Cake Filling Menu
My Cake Frosting Method
Smooth Buttercream Cake Frosting
Hi Kristen,
Thank you for all your videos and tips. I’ve learnt a lot so much from watching them. I have a client that wants a lemon cake with lemon curd filling. It requires an elaborate decoration and it may require me to make a day ahead. My question is how long can I work on the unrefrigerated cake and more importantly, once covered in sugar paste can I can wrap it in cling film and pop back in the fridge? Would that affect my sugarpaste work?
Any advice would be very welcomed.
Thank you.