Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

I SWEAR I made this cake, and it was devoured yesterday after a delicious BBQ at my friend's house. It was a perfect ending to a warm summer evening. My internet at my house has been spotty all weekend and here I am at a cafe with WiFi and I forgot my camera to upload my photos. ARGH! So the post in its entirety is on the way...but maybe not until tomorrow.

OK! Here is the post:

Rose's Heavenly Cakes gives the lemon lover many different ways to make a lemon cake. There's the Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake and the Golden Lemon Almond Cake: rich, dense, delightfully lemony. There's Woody's Lemon Luxury Layer Cake, a torted butter cake with lemon curd filling and a lemon curd buttercream. There's the Lemon Meringue Cake, a two-layer biscuit filled with lemon curd, syruped with a pow of a lemon syrup, and frosted with a fluffy browned meringue. And there's this week's Heavenly Cake assignment: the Lemon Canadian Crown. The sides and bottom of this cake are ladyfingers and the filling is a decadent kind of lemon mousse, topped with the fluffy browned meringue. Perfect for a summer BBQ.

Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

July 4, 2011
Name of Cake: Canadian Lemons
Occasion: HCB, and a BBQ
Constituents: ladyfingers, lemon curdish mousse, and meringue

Technically this post knocks two recipes off of my list as the ladyfingers are a separate recipe. You could go buy the packaged ladyfingers, which I did for the Cranberry Crown Cheesecake, but avoidance no longer. I made the ladyfingers.

Ladyfingers require you to separate eggs, beat the yolks to the ribbon stage:

Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

Beat the egg whites to a stiff meringue:

Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

And marry these two together. With some sugar, wondra flour, and stuff.

Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

Then there is piping. After reading the piping instructions several times all I remembered was WORK QUICKLY. So I worked too quickly, and got some sad, skinny ladyfingers to show for it. There are also some proper looking ladyfingers after I told myself to SLOW DOWN, so for a first attempt I think I did ok. I did end up with a ton of ladyfinger-like things.

Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

The springform pan is lined with ladyfingers and the disc (if you piped the disc) gets fitted into the bottom.

Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

This gets shoved into the freezer while you make the lemon curdish mousse stuff. It is not quite a lemon curd as there is no butter, you can use turbinado sugar instead of white, and both egg yolks and some whites are used. It gets cooked over a double boiler until thick and pooling slightly, which for most HCB took longer than the 15 minutes specified in the recipe. I listened to all of How Homelessness Works while cooking the lemon stuff, and that was a 40 minute podcast. So there you go.

After that, however, the recipe is easy peasy.

The lemony stuff cools to room temperature, heavy cream is whipped to soft peaks, they are folded together and poured into the ladyfinger shell, and put back in the freezer for at least 5 hours or up to 3 weeks. Talk about make ahead!

A couple of hours before serving, you whip up a meringue, frost it over the top, and if your broiler works you can brown the top in the there. After browning the cake needs to go back in the freezer for an hour before eating. At this point you can leave the completed dessert in the freezer for up to 3 weeks, but then you have to let it defrost before serving.

Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

Since my broiler is broken, I used the torch, which makes me think that I could pile the meringue on top, torch the meringue, and serve it up straight away without having to refreeze. However I did refreeze as I finished the cake 5 hours before I needed it.

The torte is still frozen for these photos just in case you were wondering why the creamy lemon mousse doesn't look so creamy.

Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

I brought it to my friend's house where she was hosting a 4th of July BBQ. We were all pet owners so we hightailed it home early to watch over our freaked out pets as our neighborhoods exploded around us. But before we did, and after we ate some delicious kebabs, we ate this cake.

Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

"Its like a lemon cloud," one person exclaimed. She was excited. The cake got the thumbs up from all the peeps. It is light and creamy, and very lemony. The ladyfinger shell looks amazing but the delicate flavor gets lost against all the creamy lemon. This was the situation with the Cranberry Crown as well. All in all, this dessert was the perfect end to a warm summery BBQ with friends. I liked it a lot, but I think in the lemon department if I am not making a sour cream bundt then I would choose the Lemon Meringue Cake. How lovely to have so many excellent choices for a lemony cake!

Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

Here is Marie's Lemon Canadian Crown from November 2010...
...and Marie's HCB roundup of all the Lemon Canadian Crowns from the November assignment.

Comments

  1. Rats about the camera! I do this sometimes and then just write my post and upload the photos later. Looking forward to your post!!!

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  2. That must have truly been a grand finale at the BBQ!

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  3. Looking forward to seeing your pictures :o)

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  4. Beautiful!!!! I love how nicely brown the top of your meringue is. You're right that Rose does have a lot of lemony cake in the book. This is one of my faves.

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  5. Gorgeous! It looks so perfect for hot weather. And thanks for the ladyfinger tutorial. I have to make them for the tiramisu and have been dreading it.

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  6. Really gorgeous cake! Your ladyfingers came out great as well :)

    I read your post at first as saying that you ate the cake and then the kebobs and I thought, "awesome, well done" ;) but then I see you ate the actual dinner first.

    I skipped this week (mostly because of my last disastrous outing making ladyfingers) but look forward to trying this one someday.

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  7. Jenn, thanks! I really enjoyed this dessert and it looks so stunning.

    Vicki, I can't wait to see your tiramisu!

    inthekitchen, thank you! We were tempted to eat the cake first, you know like as an appetizer, but reason won out and the meat came first. I hope you try the ladyfingers again. I want to improve upon my skinny, hurried ladyfingers so I plan to make then again for the tiramisu...once I gather up the courage.

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  8. Beautiful cake! And wow, your lady fingers came out perfect. Great job! They're still on my todo list. Love the torch job (I love using the torch on creme brulee).

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  9. Hanaa, I bought my torch for creme brulee and I've used it for pretty everything BUT creme brulee! I do like busting it out; even though it is small I still feel like a badass :)

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  10. a-maz-ing! I can't believe you piped your own ladyfingers! That, not the brulee torch, makes you a badass!

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