Painfully Homemade

It wasn't painful to make. Or eat. Simply painfully evident that it was homemade!
This is a birthday cake for our now three-year-old freind Gabriel Benjamin. As per Gabe's request, Gibbie and I made a Lemon Dinosaur cake. I used a classic sponge cake recipe for the white layers and homemade lemon curd between the layers and to flavor the icing. We frosted it ourselves too. Can you tell?
Gibbie (and Paul!) helped to color the paper dino you see on the cake's summit, as well as other dinos and fanciful beasts which we taped up aroung the birthday table. We had a lot of fun. The cake itself turned out dry, so I won't post the recipe, but the lemon curd only took two lemons and was surprisingly easy and delicious. Surplus lemon curd may show up on some tarts at a certain graduation party this weekend.

Lemon Curd: slightly adapted from The Complete Vegetarian Cuisine by Rose Elliot
6 Tablespoons butter
the grated rind and juice of 2 large, well-scrubbed lemons
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 eggs, beaten

-put all ingredients into the top of a double boiler
-stir until the sugar is all dissolved, the cook gently until thickened, around 20 minutes
-strain into jars. Cover, seal, label when cold, and store in a cool dry place.


The whole cake is easily dairy-free with soymilk in the butter frosting as the sponge cake and lemon curd don't need milk anyway. Happy Birthday Gabe-uh-gah!