Lemon-blackberry cake

My lovely boyfriend had a birthday yesterday, so I made him this colourful cake.  I used a lemon layer cake recipe from Annie’s Eats, and put whipped cream folded with blackberries in between the layers (the last bag of blackberries in the freezer from last summer!).  I frosted the cake with swiss meringue buttercream with lemon curd and yellow food colouring added in.  The frosting was super tasty and very easy to frost and pipe with.

I had seen meringues being used to decorate cakes on Sweetapolita and Sprinkle Bakes, and my boyfriend loves meringues, so I decided to give it a go!  I used this recipe for the meringues, flavouring them with lemon, orange, and lavender.  The stripes are made by painting lines of food colouring on the inside of the piping bag before adding the meringue.  If I were going to do this again, I think I’d use a different recipe for the meringues – they were not quite the texture I was hoping for.  Also the lemon and orange zest in them went a little strange and crystallized – next time I think I would stick to extracts.  The lavender ones worked beautifully, though.

Looking forward to August when we can pick some more blackberries!