Mother’s Day is just around the corner (this Sunday in case you didn’t know), and what could be more thoughtful than baking a cake for the special mother in your life. Today’s Lemon Meringue Cake not only looks spectacular, but tastes delicious as well.

Lemon meringues pies remind me of my mum because she always used to make them for me when I was growing up because both her and I love any kind of dessert that is lemon-based. This Lemon Meringue Cake is a nice update on the pie classic, and serves 12 people at 49 cents per serving.

I found this cake recipe in the May 2009 issue of Sunset Magazine, and knew that I immediately had to make it. I even showed the photo to Carlo and he agreed, even though he is not a big dessert fan. The Lemon Meringue Cake was featured in a gorgeous article about cakes that use this Best Butter Cake recipe as a starting point. The other cakes all looked delicious and are ones that I want to try at some point, including the Fudge Butter Cake, Strawberry Tallcake, and Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake.

Anyway, the batter of the cake was really easy to make and tasted delicious being licked out of the bowl. Sometimes I think the best part of baking is licking the bowl and spatula clean.

The cake took quite a bit longer than the recipe indicated because the middle of the cake was still gooey and the toothpick would just not come out clean. I’m not sure if this is because I made my own cake flour by adding 1/4 cup of cornstarch to 1 3/4 cups baking flour or not, but don’t worry if your cake takes a bit longer to cook. Keep on checking every 5 minutes or so until the toothpick comes out clean. The cake’s outside got a little bit crispy, but all of that ultimately gets cut off and the inside was still really fluffy and light.

I do have to say that I felt quite accomplished making my own lemon curd. It was easier than I imagined since you basically mixed together egg yolks, sugar, butter, and lemon juice, and then put it in a saucepan and then just whisk until the mixure turns really thick. The whisking required some elbow grease for sure, but the results were definitely worth it. The lemon curd was excellent, and would taste good on some scones with cream.

I was most worried about cutting the cake into thirds because I don’t have the most steady knife skills and didn’t want to butcher the cake. So I made Carlo cut the cake and he did a pretty good job. Even though my fears were totally unwarranted because it doesn’t really matter if your cuts are off because once you put the meringue coating over the cake, you can’t tell at all.

I was expecting a harder meringue coating on the cake, but by putting the egg whites and sugar over heat before whipping them, the meringue ended up being very silky and soft instead. I actually prefer harder meringues, so next time that I make this cake, I would be tempted to skip the heating step and just whisk the egg whites and sugar together to make a more airy meringue. I’m not sure if this would mess up the cooking instructions or not but I think it should still work per the recipe’s directions.

Speaking of cooking instructions, the recipe calls for the cake to be placed 7 inches below the broiler. I did this and only the top of the meringue was getting browned, not the sides. I ended up taking the cake out of the oven so the top wouldn’t get burnt, and I finished the sides of the meringue with the awesome flame torch that is our creme brulee torch.

If you don’t have a flame torch to finish off the cake, I would put the cake on the lowest rack of your oven so the meringue can broil for a bit longer and hopefully brown on all sides. Or you could just get a creme brulee torch which is perhaps one of most fun kitchen tools.

The final Lemon Meringue Cake was well worth all the effort and my sore arm from doing all of the whisking by hand. It seriously did taste just like a lemon meringue pie with the tartness of the curd and the lightness of the meringue. Even Carlo really enjoyed the cake!

I definitely recommend making this cake when you have lots of people to share it with because it does have a lot of sugar in it, and too many slices to yourself can give you the sugar jitters (or at least I got those from eating too many slices!).

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