Lemon Canadian Crown

The last few weeks have been a bit crazy for me and as a result I haven’t been baking.  As a friend once told me, “Baking is my happy place,” which really is true for me.  I have missed the whirr of my KitchenAid and the aroma of sweet smells whafting from my oven.

Last week’s Heavenly Cake baking assignment was the Lemon Canadian Crown.  Fortunately for me, I baked this cake for my husband’s birthday in September.  Out of all the cakes in Rose’s book, Hubby chose this one for his special day.  Since we are not allowed to post about cakes before they have been assigned, I did not post about it at the time.  I figured I would end up making it again when the rest of the group baked it, but with everything going on I wasn’t able to. This cake definitely lived up to its expectations.

The frozen dessert needs to be made at least 5 hours ahead so it can firm up before eating.  It calls for ladyfingers which can be store bought or homemade.  Generally I would have leaped into making the ladyfingers but I didn’t have time so I went with store-bought. You cut the bottoms off and of the ladyfingers and line the pan with them.  It took two packages for this.

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Lemon Logs

Last week I decided to try making a butter ganache filling because they are supposed to last longer than a regular ganache. I looked through my book and decided to try making the lemon butter ganache. The only problem was that one of the ingredients was fondant. I have never made confectioner’s fondant before, in fact I had never even heard of it before. But I really wanted to try this recipe so I figured I would need to figure it all out.

So one day early last week I made the fondant. I was really nervous about it because it required agitating it at the end and I didn’t exactly know what to expect and didn’t know how to know if I was doing it correctly. But I decided I would just jump right in and see what happened. It actually went very smoothly. After I had poured it on the marble slab and agitated it for about 10 minutes, it began to get opaque and very thick. Then all of a sudden, it seemed like it turned into a rock. I was afraid I had ruined it. I knew it had to cure overnight so I was just hoping that it would soften up overnight. I decided it felt lumpy and so I massaged the lumps out of it and it seemed a better texture after that. I put it into a container and left it overnight. The next day Marshall sampled it and it was very smooth. So I was hopeful that it turned out the way it was supposed to.

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