Lemon and poppy seed birthday cake with buttercream icing and blueberry cream

Nehir turned 10 couple of weeks ago and wanted a special birthday cake. Actually she drew the picture of it for me to work from.

She wanted the cake to be the Lemon and Poppy seed cake, the national trust cake which she baked once and I have baked loads of times. The one she baked & I photographed was featured on Food52 which we are very proud of. For that reason it would have to be the lemon and poppy seed cake.

Recipe for the cake is from the book "Sweet" by Ottolenghi and Helen Goh. But it is also available on food.52 and here is the link to the recipe.

Icing she wanted was just Crème fraîche but with little persuasion she agreed to have cream cheese Swiss meringue icing. Swiss meringue buttercream is based on Dan Lepard's Chocolate Swiss Meringue Butter cream icing recipe that I always use for birthday cakes. Here is a link to the original recipe.

I adapted the icing recipe replacing chocolate with full fat cream cheese, I started with the same amount as chocolate 150 gr but ended up adding a bit more maybe 50 grams more to make it more creamy. I just tasted and added more cheese until I was happy with the taste.

I made a simple blueberry cream with blueberries and a little bit of the butter cream. I cooked 200 gr blueberries with 2 table spoons sugar and 1 table spoon cornflour and cooked it down about 10 minutes on low heat until all the blueberries are broken down. Then I cooled this and mixed it with cream that is enough to fill the layers of the cake.

Blueberry pattern was designed by Nehir and we placed 9 candles in between two circles of blueberries.

Happy birthday to my baby once again, let's hope when life gives you lemons you will make this lemon poppy seed cake and enjoy it.