Weddings weddings weddings and a lemon raspberry & yoghurt roses cake with cream cheese frosting

Goin' to the chapel and we're 

Gonna married,

Goin' to the chapel and we're
Gonna get married
Gee, I really love you and we're
Gonna get married
Goin' to the chapel of love   

~ Dixie Cups

Wedding fever is in the air.

Now go on, admit it, you watched The Wedding too didn't you?

I swear I wasn't going to.  I was going to resist the hype.   But then, like millions of others all around the world, I got totally sucked in.  The outfits! The hats! That dress!  It's the water-cooler topic of the year.  Everyone has an opinion, from the Pippa vs Kate debate to that hat worn by a certain princess.  It is everyone's fairy tale and a bright happy moment in these tumultuous times.

For me, I have a double dose of wedding fever.  Not only was there the Royal wedding to obsess about but my own wedding is in *eek!* two and a half weeks so I most definitely have wedding on the brain.  I'm sleeping, eating and breathing wedding.  There is just so much to do!  So many decisions to make!  It's like the proverbial eight headed monster - you tick one job off the list and two more sprout in its wake.

So seeing as getting married is what all the cool kids are doing these days, it made sense to have a wedding-ey theme of Love & Marriage for the last round of Baking for Hospice.  For Round 15, I made Lemon Raspberry & Yoghurt Roses Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting - it's an incredibly moist tangy lemon cake dotted with bright bursts of raspberries and covered in cream cheese frosting roses.  The rosettes idea is so gorgeous and so easy to do, had I not already baked my own wedding cake (sneak peek to come), I would have been happy to have one just like this on the big day. 

I was first blown away by this gorgeous decorating idea on the D*lish blog.  What a genius idea!

I've always been a humongous fan of using frosting roses/rosettes on cupcakes (as evidenced by my constant use of them: here, here and here) but had never ever even considered using this technique on a cake.  

The roses are so easy to do, take no time at all and the result is simply spectacular.  You just need a piping bag and an open star icing nozzle.

The cake itself is not too shabby either.  It's adapted from a trusty Annabel Langbein recipe - a blitz, mix and bake number - super simple and can make one massive cake, two medium cakes or a bunch of smaller ramekin sized cakes.  It's moist but still light with the tangy lemons and raspberries cutting through the creamy richness of the cream cheese icing.  Divine.  

And it keeps moist for days.

I could marry this cake.

Mum took one of the cakes to work and I got super lovely thank you notes from her colleagues - thanks so much ladies and gents, stoked you enjoyed it!

Lemon Raspberry and Yoghurt Roses Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Cake recipe tweaked from Annabel Langbein recipe in The Best of Annabel Langbein

Makes one 30 cm diameter cake (or 30cm x 20cm sheet cake), two 21 cm diameter cakes, and ~ 8 ramekin sized cakes.

3 cups sugar
4 eggs
juice and zest from 4 lemons
2 cups canola oil (or other flavourless oil)
1 3/4 cup unsweetened plain yoghurt
4 cups flour
6 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp salt
3 cups frozen raspberries

1.  Preheat the oven to 160oC.  Line the cake tins with baking paper.

2. Sift flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.

3. In a food processor whiz together the sugar, eggs, lemon juice and zest, oil and yoghurt until combined.  Add flour mixture and blitz until just combined.

4. Transfer cake mixture into a large bowl and fold through the frozen raspberries.

5.  Pour into the cake tins and bake for 1 hour - 1.5 hours (depending on the size of the cake you are making) until springy to touch and a skewer comes out clean.

6.  Cool in the tin before turning out.  The cake will stay beautifully moist for 3-4 days.  Frost with cream cheese icing.

My Go-To Cream Cheese Frosting

800 g cream cheese ***make sure you use full fat cream cheese and not spreadable or low fat. I recommend using Philadelphia brand, have had some bad batches with other brands!***
250 g unsalted butter, softened
3 tsp vanilla
7-8 cups icing sugar, sifted

1.  Cream butter till fluffy.  Add cream cheese and vanilla and beat until just mixed in.

2. Add icing sugar 1/2 cup at a time beating after each addition until fluffy.  Be careful not to overbeat as this will cause the icing to go oozy.

3.  Spread a layer of cream cheese icing all over the cake (top and sides).  It doesn't have to be very thick or very neat but what it does is give you a base to do the roses on so you won't be able to see the cake underneath.

4.  To make the frosting roses: you will need a piping bag and an open star frosting nozzle (I use the 1M wilton tip).  Make the roses along the side of the cake first before working around the outside of the cake in towards the centre.  Start with your nozzle about 1cm above where you want the centre of rose to go. Squeeze a little frosting out to start off and anchor the frosting and then using your wrist move the nozzle in a spiral starting from the centre and spiralling outwards for ~ two whole circles.  Then lessen your pressure on the piping bag to let the frosting taper off.  For pictures check out the Sweet & Salty Cupcakes post for step by step photos).  Try and taper off around the bottom of the cake to hid the tail bit.  You can always scrap the rose off and start again if you don't like it! If you want, you can fill in any gaps with a comet shaped swish of icing going in the same direction as the rose.

*Ok it takes a lot of words to describe so it makes it sound hard but do check out the Sweet & Salty Cupcakes post and give it a go.  It's basically doing a spiral from the inside out and once you get the hang of it you be surprised at how easy it is!*

5.  Keep the frosted cake in the fridge to set the cream cheese frosting.  It will keep for around 3-4 days in the fridge.

Variations
*For mini muffins: Bake at 160oC for 15 minutes.
*For cupcakes: Bake at 160oC for 20-25 minutes.
*For loaf: Bake at 160oC for 45 minutes.
*Split batch: One lot of mixture makes 48 mini cupcakes + 12 cupcakes + 1 loaf. For this I used this brown sugar cream cheese frosting but didn't have quite enough to frost the loaf so I made a lemon glaze with juice and zest of 1 lemon + 1 1/2 cup icing sugar and drizzled it over while still warm.