Stephanie Alexander's Lemon Curd Layer Cake a la Celebrity Masterchef AUS

I am addicted to Celebrity Masterchef at the moment.  I am curious about well known people and their cooking habits and I am sometimes pleasantly surprised at how well some can actually cook.  They are brave people that put themselves in front of a whole nation and wait for judges to criticise their dishes.  I am definitely not that brave.

I think the highlight of each episode is when the celebrity guest Chef is revealed, whose dishes the contestants will try to replicate. The dish that has so far left me drooling was Stephanie Alexander's Lemon Curd Layer Cake with fresh Passionfruit.

I knew when I first saw it I had to make it.  I'm familiar with crepe cakes and I've made a couple of different versions before.  You can read a similar lemon one here and and my chocolate one here.

It's definitely VERY different replicating this recipe at home compared to doing it in the studio with a time constraint.   I was able to read and re-read the recipe as often as I liked before beginning the recipe to ensure I understood each step.  And the only judge I had to worry about was Hubby.

So here is my attempt at Stephanie Alexander's Lemon Curd Layer Cake.

I made a few changes.  Firstly I didn't use passionfruit for the topping.  Since Hubby was the judge and predominantly the one to consume it, I opted to change it and used tropical juice rather as he doesn't particularly like passionfruit.  Another change I made was I used gelatin powder as opposed to gelatin leaves.  Simply because I had powder in the pantry.

Here is the recipe for this scrumptious cake.  As someone commented at the bottom of the recipe, 2 teaspoons of gelatin powder is equivalent to 4 sheets of gelatin leaves.

I didn't find this recipe particularly hard to make.  I think the hardest part was the waiting.  Each component of this cake had to be cooled down.  The crepe batter had to sit for 15 minutes while the lemon filling had to be cooled completely before assembling the cake.  The contestants had access to a blast chiller which would have take the filling to cool in minutes.  It took me about 30 minutes or so.

I found the cake was better the next day as the gelatin was set, making it easier to slice for serving.  The cake stayed separate in their layers

I do hope people make this recipe as it's not as complicated as one might think.

Bon Appetite,

Cherrie