Atlantic Beach Cake is a riff on my favorite pie ever, that I posted about here. The pie version uses saltines sweetened with a little sugar and held together with butter as the crust. In my cake version I bake that mixture and use it in between the layers. It is delicious! Crunchy, tart, sweet, salty. All of my favorites in one cake. Does life get any better?
It’s been a hot minute, er, four months since I’ve posted. Oops. I take full responsibility. Life just got in the way. The cake business side of things is gradually getting busier and my full time job has been needing my full attention lately. So when something has to suffer, unfortunately it’s this special place right here.
Now, I understand some of you are probably wondering why on Earth I would be posting a lemon cake in November. Just days away from Thanksgiving. Shouldn’t it be pumpkin or pecan or whatever the hell else you have at Thanksgiving? Short answer: no. Let me tell you why.
- My family and my in-laws put lemon desserts on a pedestal. Lemon meringue pies, Atlantic Beach Pie (which is now a favorite of many other family members after I introduced them to it), Lemon tarts, literally anything with lemon in it, are the first to be requested and the first to disappear at family gatherings, regardless of season.
- While I happen to love lemon everything during the summer, we are mere moments away from the best time of year. Citrus season. When Meyer Lemons hit the grocery stores, I LOAD up and make batches of Meyer Lemon Curd to last me through the coming months.
- It’s a proven scientific fact that lemon desserts have no calories.
- Okay. So number 3 is false, but I feel like a lemon dessert is akin to a palette cleanser. Refreshing and bright! It’s the perfect dessert to help wake you from your turkey/tryptophan coma.
The cake starts off with vanilla cake layers. If you are looking for a recipe I happen to LOVE King Arthur Flour’s Golden Vanilla Cake recipe. It’s super simple, can be customized with different flavors/extracts and comes out perfectly every time. The frosting was a simple vanilla american buttercream and I added spoonfuls of Lemon Curd in between the layers. As I mentioned before, there’s also the slightly sweet, slight salty saltine crunch that I added between the layers as well. You know I love some different texture elements in there!
I tinted some of the buttercream with yellow gel food coloring and went to town slapping a little frosting on parts of the cake and then smoothed it all out with an icing scraper or offset spatula. I can’t resist the French piping tip so I filled a piping bag with some of the leftover buttercream and piped little clusters all over the sides and then went a bit overboard on top of the cake! The sprinkles are from Fancy Sprinkles which is my favorite place to go sprinkle shopping. They have gorgeous sprinkle mixes and even offer a new monthly sprinkle subscription. Which could be why I need more storage space!
Hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels!
Ann