Lemon Cake and Quiche

My sister, her husband and their kids just moved to this amazing new home.
This is the perfect reason to get family and friends together and enjoy a nice afternoon with lovely food.
My sister and brother in law had these amazing quiches with goat cheese and vegetables, one with tuna and leek and another one with potatoes and zucchini.
They were all really worth a try. I really need to make more quiches too. They are so good!

Of course there needed to be cake!! So I dove into my kitchen and started right away.

I wanted to make something fresh, but sweet.
So i finally made this amazing lemon cake with frosting. I was really glad that everybody liked it. And even a few asked me for the recipe!
First I was a bit scared that maybe the cake was too heavy and people were only able to eat really small pieces..  But I worried for no reason, at the end of the night, there was no piece left. Pfieuw!

First I made the cake:
You'll need:
230 gr Butter, soft (2 sticks or 1 cup)
400 gr caster sugar (2 cups)
4         eggs
360 gr self rising flour (3cups) 
240 ml milk (1 cup)
zest of whole lemon.

1. Preheat oven to 180C (350F) and butter the bottoms and sides of 2 cake pans. I used 18 cm (7inch) cake pans.
2.Mix the butter until its light and fluffy. Add sugar and keep mixing this about 6 to 8 minutes until it looks like a smooth creme. 
3.Add the eggs one at the time.
4.After you mixed all the eggs you can add the flour and the milk. You first need to add a little bit of flour, then a bit of milk. Keep doing this until you used all of both ingredients. Start with the flour and end with the flour. Do this while you keep mixing.
5. Last thing you need to do is throw in the zest of lemon. 
6.Scrape the mixture in the 2 cake pans. Bake the cakes for 20 to25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of each cake comes out clean. My cakes took about an hour. When the cake is ready flip it upside down on a rack and let it cool down for 20 minutes.

Now for the filling, you can either buy lemon curd or make lemon curd. Depends on how much time you've got or if you like making lemon curd.

I had no time, so I did a bad thing and just used lemon curd I bought in a shop.. aii!

7. Fill the cake with lemon curd. You've got 2 cakes, so fill them both 2 or 3 times. Add a little lemon curd on top of one cake, and apply the other cake on top. 

Now its time for the frosting. I made the 7 minute frosting for this one.
You'll need:
45 ml water
1/4 TS creme de tartar 
265 gr sugar
2 egg whites
1 TBS Corn syrup 
1 TBS vanilla extract

8.Mix with a whisk the first 5 ingredients together.
9.When you mixed it a little, put the bowl in a pan filled with water. Au bain marie. The water must not touch the bowl! Heat the water, but don't let it cook. Stir all the ingredients until the sugar has melted.
10. Remove the bowl from the pan. Now mix this for 5 minutes on high speed. then add the vanilla extract and mix again for 2-3 minutes.
Apply on cake. You can either put it on with a spoon or with a piping bag, or any other creative way you can think of.  I used a creme brulee burner to get the frosting a little bit browner.

Really worth a try!