White Cake with Raspberry Filling and Buttercream Frosting

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the cake flour, sugar, milk powder (if using), baking powder, and salt. Add the vegetable oil. Use a hand mixer to combine the oil with the dry ingredients until they are evenly coated and no dry pockets of flour remain. The texture should be like wet sand. Add the milk mixture and beat on low speed just until combined. Do not over mix.

Pour the batter evenly between the prepared cake pans.

Bake for 34-37 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cakes. Cool for 20-30 minutes in the pan before inverting onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Combine the granulated sugar and lemon zest in a medium bowl. Rub the zest and sugar together between your fingers to express the oils and flavor from the zest. Add the egg yolks and whisk vigorously until light yellow and fluffy.

Add flour and cornstarch and whisk until thoroughly combined and lightened in color even further. Very slowly stream in the warmed vanilla milk with a ladle while whisking vigorously to prevent cooking the eggs. Continue slowly adding in the milk mixture until it is all combined.

Place a fine mesh sieve over the medium saucepan you used previously and return the entire mixture to the medium saucepan through the sieve. Discard the solids in the sieve. Place over low heat and whisk constantly until the pastry cream has thickened to a pudding consistency (coats the back of a spoon). This can take 5+ minutes. Remove from the heat promptly and transfer to a heatproof bowl or baking sheet (for faster cooling). Cover the surface with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming.

Place the bowl over a larger bowl with ice and place in the refrigerator to cool for at least 2 hours. If using a baking sheet, place it in the fridge without the ice.

When ready to use the pastry cream, add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and mix just until combined.

Add the room temperature cream cheese to the bowl the buttercream was just in. Beat on medium with the paddle attachment until the cream cheese is completely smooth. Add your swiss meringue buttercream to your cream cheese in thirds. Do not add your cream cheese to your swiss meringue buttercream. It will not mix in properly.

Your frosting is ready to use as is, or you can add food coloring. I added whitener and a very small drop of purple to whiten it further.

Put a small dollop of the buttercream on a serving plate or board (this will help the cake stick and not slide around). Place the first layer of cake on top. Pipe a tall, thick dam of buttercream around the top edge of the cake to keep the fillings in. Fill with a layer of raspberry jam (you won’t need all of it**) and then a layer of the lemon pastry cream (you won’t need all of it**). Place the second layer of cake on top.

Cover the entire cake with a thin layer of the buttercream to create a crumb coat to seal in any crumbs. Freeze for 5-10 minutes to seal this coating.

When the crumb coat is set, pipe or dollop a thin layer frosting around the outside. Spread evenly with an offset spatula before scraping down the outside edge with a bench scraper. You may need to do this several times to get a smooth look, but don’t worry too much about it being perfect if you plan to pipe on it like I did.

I find that keeping the bench scraper in a bowl of warm water before using it (drying it off in between) helped remove air bubbles on the outside and made smoothing even easier. If you need a visual on how to frost a traditional layer cake, check out this video.

Garnish as desired. I piped dollops all over using a large French star tip and then garnished with fresh raspberries.