Lemon Blackberry Cake

I received many fantastic gifts for Christmas and birthday this year - one of them being small cake pans (4, 6and 8"). I was excited to be able to try out more flavor combos without being stuck with a huge cake.

I wanted to try Gourmet's Lemon Raspberry Wedding Cake. The cake, syrup and lemon curd I made according to the recipe. The buttercream I changes, and I subbed blackberry jam for the rasperries (not interested in the moldy fruit mentioned by a reviewer).

I started with the lemon curd for the buttercream. I've never made a lemon curd before, I was thrilled that it came together - and it tastes pretty fantastic. It's by far the best of any of the elements of this recipe. I only needed half, and the rest I've been eating with a spoon.

I'm not comfortable with italian meringue buttercream (I've read that the eggs really don't get hot enough), so I usually do swiss meringue. The frosting seemed really dense, very butter-like in texture- I guess what I should have expected in texture when adding curd to buttercream. I used the proportions they gave, minus the water and did a smbc + the lemon curd. You can even see how dense the buttercream was.

I made one batch of the cake for two 6" pans. Then stacking - cake, syrup, blackberry jam, lemon buttercream. I was having trouble with catching the jam in the buttercream, so I fridged it before trying a crumbcoat. It ended up I really didn't have enough icing, so it was just one coat.

Really, the flavors of everything were good, the textures just seemed off. The cake seemed coarse and a bit dry, even with the syrup. I really like the combination of flavors, I'll have to try another variation for the cake. I'll have to try a tart with the lemon curd, it'd give me a chance to try Dorie's sweet tart dough again!