Pink, Purple, and Green Lemon Cake

Happy {early} Mothers Day! 
I hope all the Mothers, and Mothers-to-be, have a wonderful weekend filled with joy, and cake!  And to my mom, thank you for everything you do!  Your going to be the best grandma ever :).

To celebrate such a wonderful occasion, I made a delicious Lemon Cake for all the mothers out there.  To make it extra special, I added a girly-touch by frosting the entire cake in a pink-purple dyed effect, and sprinkling edible pearls around the bottom part of the cake.  Inside the cake is green buttercream to resemble the colors of a beautiful flower, pink, purple, and green.  

The flavors of this Lemon Cake really shine.  To tell you the truth, I have been looking for a lemon cake for such a long time.  All I could seem to find were dense, rich, pound-cake-like recipes.  Nothing was quite what I wanted.  Until I found this recipe.  It had all the right combinations of a good lemon cake.  Of course I had to adapt it to match my flavor-profile and tastes, and to make it more moist and buttery.  It ended up tasting almost exactly like my favorite vanilla cake, but with an extra tangy, lemon-y flavor.  

Now this is a lemon cake.  A real lemon cake.  Not a lemon pound cake. 

Lemon is such a great flavor for springtime and summer.  This cake would not only be the perfect addition to your Mothers Day weekend, but would be great anytime this spring or summer. 

Enjoy!  Have a happy, happy, happy Mother's Day!

  

Pink, Purple, and Green Lemon Cake

For Printable Recipe, Click here!

Makes: 9-inch, 2-layer Cake

Lemon Cake

3 cups All Purpose Flour

1 ½ teaspoons Baking Powder

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

¾ teaspoon Salt

1 ½ cups Sugar

¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) Unsalted Butter, at Room Temperature

3 Eggs

1 cup Milk

¼ cup Sour Cream

3 tablespoons Lemon Zest

1/3 cup Lemon Juice

Pink, Purple, and Green Vanilla Buttercream

1 ½ cups (3 sticks) Unsalted Butter, at Room Temperature

3 cups Confectioners Sugar

Pinch Salt

2 teaspoons Pure Vanilla Extract

Pink, Purple, and Green Food Coloring

To make the lemon cake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease the sides and bottom of 2 9-inch round cake pans.  Flour the sides of the pans and then line the bottoms with parchment paper rounds.  Set aside until needed.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the sugar and butter until light and creamy, about 3-4 minutes.  Add the eggs, one at time, mixing well between each addition.  With the mixer running on low speed, add the flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the milk and the sour cream.  Add the lemon zest and lemon juice and beat until the batter is smooth, about 30 seconds.

Divide the batter between the 2 prepared pans.  Bake the cake in the oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 20 minutes.  Remove the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool in the pans for 10 minutes.  Transfer the cakes to a cooling rack to cool completely.

While the cakes are cooling, make the buttercream.  Cream the butter in the bowl of stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, about 5 minutes.  Add the confectioners sugar and salt and mix, gradually increasing in speed, until the sugar is fully incorporated.  Add the vanilla and whisk until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 5 minutes – you may need to stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl a couple times. 

If you are coloring the buttercream the 3 different colors, divide the buttercream into 3 different bowls – 2 bowls having about 40% of the buttercream each and the other bowl having 20%.  Add green food coloring to one of the bowls with 40% of the buttercream, pink food coloring to the other one, and purple food coloring to the remaining 20%.  Mix each bowl well until there is no white showing.  Use the green food coloring to fill the cakes, and the pink buttercream to frost the top and the sides of the entire cake. 

Using the purple buttercream, take a small dollop of the buttercream and place it on the side of the cake.  Spread it into the pink buttercream so it creates a light ombre effect.  Continue spreading dollops of the purple buttercream onto the sides and top of the cake until you have frosted the complete cake with enough purple buttercream to create a beautiful purple-pink effect.

If you have any buttercream left, place the remaining buttercream in a piping bag fitted with a large open star tip.  Pipe a spiral on the top, middle of the cake.

Slice, serve, and enjoy!

This cake lasts up to 5 days in a sealed container.

Cake recipe adapted from My Recipes.