A Royal Wedding Cake Triumph... and a Major Cake Fail
This is Royal Wedding Cake. Yes, those royals. A gluten and dairy free cake inspired by the cake eaten at Harry & Megan's nuptials – Lemon Elderflower Cake with Lemon Curd and Elderflower Swiss Buttercream.
Recipe adapted with my gluten free cake flour blend and made dairy free with the use of vegan butter in the cake and buttercream (which isn't vegan since it contains eggs, as does the lemon curd which is full of wonderfully rich ochre colored pastured egg yolks).
The cake and lemon curd was made with lemons from our backyard trees which are exploding and decorated very simply with a (love it or loathe it) naked cake finish and fresh camellias from our historic camellia bush that is also absolutely exploding with blooms this month.
This was the first time I've been able to pull off a real Victorian style sponge without gluten. It was soft and airy and though the crumb wasn't as open as some of the other cakes I've made, the cake was sturdy and moist without being stodgy or gummy the way gluten free cakes too often can be. The lemon curd was sublime and absolutely worth the little extra time to make from scratch. I also went as heavy as I could on the Elderflower liqueur without breaking the buttercream and the scent was heavenly.
As for that cake fail… Despite creating a sturdy buttercream dam border, using properly chilled lemon curd, and chilling the cake between steps, I got greedy and added too much lemon curd to the layers so the curd escaped the bottom layer of the cake, which should never happen, and then the upper part of the cake started to slide off of the bottom. Disaster!
In the end, I let it slide all the way off, guided by a spatula onto a plate, used my palate knife to scrape the curd from that layer (boo) and reassembled the layers without curd on one to make sure it would be sturdy enough for transport. Not ideal, but better than scrapping the whole cake... or having it slide off while traveling or serving!
The snafu meant this cake wasn't as sexy as it should have been when sliced (one layer is missing its filling!) but it was delicious, especially with a little extra buttercream and curd on the side.
This cake was made and devoured inside of 12 hours so all we snapped were some hurried nighttime pics. Some cakes are just made to be eaten!
Sidebar, there's a lot of controversy around whether or not it's safe to use fresh flowers on a cake. In this case, camellias aren't poisonous (they're from the tea family and the petals are actually edible) and I grew these myself, so I know they've never seen pesticides or any other scary stuff. They also weren't on the cake long nor were the stems inserted into the cake (in which case I would have used floral tape and paper straws). For the record, I'm team real flowers. Don't even get me started on all of the crap used to produce those fab fakes some folks think are somehow more safe.
Those amazing Nucio camellias at sunset!
This lemon cake with elderflower buttercream has become one of our favorites and is currenly on the Spring 2022 menu. Want to order a gluten free cake?
Find more info about our cake offerings and current menu here.
