yellow ruffle lemon cake filled with lemon whipped cream and fresh blueberries

Speaking of reconnecting with high school friends (which I mentioned in my last post), sometime last summer I also made this yellow ruffle cake for my friend Bernice from high school, who was hosting a baby shower for her sister Tiffany! She wanted to emulate a blueberry cheesecake that was a favorite of her sister's, so we decided on a lemon cake with blueberry whipped cream, similar to this cake. (Although now that I look at the pictures, I totally forgot to make a blueberry whipped cream, and ended up making a whipped cream with fresh blueberries instead! OOPS! I'm so sorry, Bernice!)

Anyway, for the lemon cake I used the vanilla cake recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book, and added grated lemon zest to the batter (instead of the extracts). I baked them into two 8-inch cake pans, let them cool, and then cut them in half horizontally (giving me 4 cake layers). Then I filled each layer with fresh whipped cream and fresh blueberries.

For the frosting, Bernice wanted a ruffle cake similar to this one, except we decided to go with buttercream instead of whipped cream since it was going to be a hot day! Since I knew the cake would be covered with ruffles, I only covered the cake with a quick crumb coat of yellow buttercream (recipe also in my book!).

Then I used a disposable pastry bag fitted with a petal tip to pipe the ruffles, starting in the middle of the cake and piping continuous rings towards the outer edge of the cake. (A nice revolving cake stand works great for this! Or, you could use a lazy susan.)

Then I continued piping all the way down the sides of the cake.

Here's a view from the top, isn't it pretty?



I do think that this technique with buttercream gives a slightly different look than when done with whipped cream though, as buttercream gives slightly smoother ruffles while whipped cream gives more textured ruffles. But both effects are still very pretty.

Anyway hopefully the blueberry whipped cream debacle turned out okay. (Sorry again, Bernice!)

Happy baby shower, Tiffany!