Cake #3: Marbled Lemon-Berry Butter Cake with Lemon-Berrry Preserves and Lemon Buttercream

This was my favourite cake so far. It was light and lemony and a nice texture. Patrick says it was okay - he didn't want to "scarf" it down this time but the other guests really liked it. :)
I modified the cake recipe a little - omitting the lemon extract with lemon juice because I didn't want to drag Alex to a third grocery store that day. It turned out fine but probably just less lemony that it was suppose to be. Next time I think I will try the lemon extract to see the difference.

I also modified the berry part. It was suppose to be blueberry marble/preserves but we had mixed berries in the freezer and I just used those. I skipped the straining step and just super-blended it in our Vitamix. It was a tasty preserve!

The icing was much easier this time now that I know how to make a sugar syrup. What was weird though was it was the same sugar syrup I needed in the last cake I made but they gave completely different instructions this time and it turned out much better. This time it gave instructions to use a wet pastry brush to to moisten the sides of the pot to prevent crystalization of the sugar crystals. This was the way I had seen it done on tv and I will definitely use this method again.

I forgot to use the preserves as a filling between the layers and I think this would have added more berry flavour but I used it as a plating sauce and it was yummy.

Taste Rating: 9 out of 10
Texture Rating: 9 out of 10
Overall Rating: 9 out of 10
Difficulty Rating: 4 out of 5
I would definitely make this again.