Lemon Drizzle Birthday Cake

Hello one and all, Salt here!

Thought it was about time I got baking again, and what better excuse than my other half's birthday?
I gave Beams free choice of cake, and he requested a Lemon Drizzle, but I'm a firm believer that you should be able to tell a birthday cake from your average cake, so I went all out on the decorations and created this...

I must have had a lot of good karma that day, because I baked in a limited time scale, and everything went to plan. Miraculously, neither half got stuck to the bottom of the tin and I managed to not drop the mixture, while trying to put it in the oven (that has happened before - humiliating!).

It was very well received by the boy, as were the presents you can see in the background. But more on his birthday festivities another time. Here's how I made this spongey lemony goodness!

INGREDIENTS:
For the cake:
 - 250g unsalted butter
 - 300g caster sugar
 - 4 large eggs
 - 300g self-raising flour
 - 2tbsp lemon curd

Making the sponge is fairly straight forward, and would definitely be easier with an electric whisk. Sadly, I don't have one of those, so it took a fair amount of time!

Firstly, cream the butter and sugar together.
Beat the eggs, and gradually mix them in with the butter and sugar.
Sift in the selfraising flour, and finally, stir in the lemon curd. Simple!

Pop the mixtures in two greased cake tins and pop in the oven for 25-30 minutes.

Once baked, and a cocktail stick comes out clean, remove the tins from the oven.
Keeping the cakes in the tins, pop them on a cooling rack.

For the glaze:
 - Juice of one lemon
 - 4tbsp granulated sugar

Mix the lemon juice and the sugar together.
Take a cocktail stick and make several smalll shallow holes in the cakes. While they are still warm, pour over the lemony, sugary glaze.
As the cake cools, this will seep through the cake, as well as settling on top.

For the filling:
 - 300g full fat cream cheese
 - 2tbsp lemon curd

Once the cakes are completely cool, remove them from the tins.
To create your filling, mix together the cream cheese and lemon curd, and spread it onto to the top pf one of the cakes with a pallet knife. Place the remaining cake on top.

The glaze would have left a nice shiny topping, but as it was a birthday cake, I felt the need to go all out on the decoration, so I saved half of the filling to go on top too, and finished it off with lemon sugar crunch, which I found in Morrissons, and some colourful birthday candles!

If you try it out, please do let me know how it works for you!
This is one of the simplest cakes I've made, which still has a definite wow factor. Enjoy and bon apetit!