Playing Catch Up - Woody's Lemon Layer Cake

What an unmitigated disappointment this cake was or perhaps it was just the baker...  I read a few posts on it and marveled at the light texture and general gorgeousness of it.  There were no real warnings to heed, so even though I was running a week behind, I figured I would whip this cake up for a Friday the 13th morning tea.

The method of beating the butter into the flour and then slowly adding the eggs/liquid always leaves me with a flat, tough cake.  I am not sure what I am doing wrong.  Am I beating too much?  I have no idea.   The old fashioned creaming butter and sugar, beating in the eggs and folding in the flour always gives me a better textured more airy cake.  One of the great mysteries of the world - any tips will be gladly received.

I have been entirely slack in the photo department for this cake - I will get my act back together for the Pinch Cake.  I think the jetlag has eaten my motivation!  The cake came together pretty well, though the time between uncooked and overcooked was about a nanosecond.  Needless to say I missed it, and one of my cakes was overcooked.  I really need a double oven - did you hear that Santa?  I also used some silicon pan liners in the place of the parchment paper - what a mistake.  I thought silicon didn't stick to anything, well, I can now attest that cake sticks to silicon.  This cake at least.  Hot, warm or cold, it stuck just the same - even worse on the overcooked cake.

I did cheat and chickened out of sacrificing even more eggs to this cake - I used the Tiptree Lemon Curd instead of standing over a double boiler stirring.  I have done my lemon curd time!  My icing came together without any issues.  The white chocolate custard tasted a bit liked condensed milk but maybe that was because I had tasted it too much?!  It was smooth and creamy and a dream to wrap around the cake.  I also trimmed off the browned tops and bottoms - surely Woody did that for the photo shoot, because I can't imagine how he got them to stay so unbrowned...

I am pretty sure that I will never ever make this cake again.  Well, maybe I might attempt it if I get some remedial lessons on the method.  The icing I will most definitely make again.  The texture was fantastic and it would be great on cupcakes.  Given that, I have to correct my opening cry of this cake being an unmitigated disappointment - the icing saved it.  Having said that the friends I served it up to, raved about it.  I just love how the English are so so terribly polite!