I wanted a sour and refreshing cake for New Year’s Eve, something simple to make (you already know this leitmotif from my recipes 😊), so I thought a layer cake with a lot of lemon juice would fulfill these requirements. The quantities below yield a small cake, not too tall and which can be divided into 6 “normal” servings according to my taste. If you want it bigger you can double the quantities and make it higher, instead of 2 layers of the cake you can make 4, and thus you can have 6 generous servings. For us, it was enough to indulge our taste buds after the New Year’s Eve meal without stuffing ourselves.
Ingredients
For the cake:
- 3 eggs
- 75 grams of white sugar
- 50 grams of rice flour
- 25 grams of coconut flour
- 50 grams of coconut oil
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
- 30 grams of lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon of baking powder
- A pinch of salt
For the cream:
- 3 egg yolks
- 75 grams of sugar
- 75 grams of lemon juice
- 40 grams of coconut oil
- 10 grams of gelatin
- 200 grams of coconut cream for cooking, low fat
- A teaspoon of vanilla essence
Recipe Method
Cake
I made the cake a day before assembling the layer cake, but it can be made the same day, just let it cool.
I used a stand mixer with a bowl. If you are using a hand mixer, weigh and prepare all the ingredients before you start.
Separate the eggs, put the yolks in the bowl of the mixer, the whites in a large, clean bowl. We put the salt over the egg yolks, mix them a little and let them rest for 2 minutes, until we weigh the sugar. The salt will intensify the yellow color of the yolks. Add the sugar and mix, first at low speed, then at high speed. It will take some time until we get a thick, homogeneous cream. Meanwhile, weigh and liquefy the coconut oil in warm water if needed. If it is summer it is already liquid. We weigh and mix the flour with the baking powder, squeeze the lemon. Beat the egg whites. We turn on the oven at a temperature of 175 degrees Celsius.
Add the ingredients in the following order, with a break of 3-4 minutes between them, after the yolks have mixed well with the sugar: lemon juice and vanilla essence, coconut oil, flour mixture (spoon by spoon, not all at once), and the last ingredient added and mixed, 4-5 spoons of the egg white foam. We stop the mixer, remove the bowl from the position and slowly incorporate the rest of the egg white foam. At the end we will get a liquid, viscous batter, which we will pour into the pan greased with coconut oil. I have a small, round pan 18 cm in diameter and removable rim. Place in the oven and leave until the surface is lightly golden and hard to the touch, about 20 minutes.
Cream
For the cream, proceed as follows: with the help of a whisk, mix the egg yolks with the sugar in a saucepan, then add the lemon juice. Put the saucepan on the stove over low heat and stir continuously until it thickens. It should not boil too much, maximum 1 minute. It is ready when the foam on the surface has disappeared. Turn off the heat and add the coconut oil. There is no need to liquefy it, just pour it over the hot cream and whisk until incorporated. Put the pan in the refrigerator until the cream cools. It won’t take long, it has already cooled a little from the cold oil. Prepare the gelatin: mix it with 80 ml of water in a kettle, leave for 10 minutes, then liquefy it on a low heat. Do not boil it, when it has become liquid it is ready. We pour it over the cold cream. We also put vanilla essence. We prepare the last ingredient, the coconut cream. Turn it over in a bowl and homogenize it with a spoon or put it in a miniblender and mix it there for 1-2 minutes. Put it in the saucepan, mix well and the cream is ready.
Assemble
Cut the cake into 2 layers lengthwise. With the help of the ring of the baking pan that we lined with a piece of cardboard wrapped in plastic film, we assemble the cake. We place the first layer of the cake, pour half of the cream, place the second layer of the cake (we push it well over the cream, so that there are no air gaps) and finish with the second half of the cream. Do not be afraid that the cream is too liquid, it will harden after 3-4 hours in the refrigerator.
After the cream has hardened, we take the cake out of the fridge, remove the ring, then carefully peel off the cardboard wrapped in plastic film (I didn’t have the special acetate film to stabilize the cake in a cold environment, so I improvised with what I had at hand). Now we can decorate it. Here everyone uses their imagination and what they have around the house. I decorated it with chocolate flakes and figures and some glazed cherries.
