I haven’t gone anywhere, not even on a holiday. I’m very much here though I’ve been missing from the blog for over two weeks. I was just busy with some other stuff and blogging had to take a temporary back seat because I didn’t have the time to spare. However, I’m back and thought I’d share a birthday cake I’d baked early this month.

I don’t make frosted cakes a lot because there aren’t too many occasions these days that call for them especially as our daughter who loves them is away at college most of the year. I’m not particularly fond of buttercream or icing of any kind other than whipped cream and ganache. My husband loves most things sweet but then all that stuff isn’t really what we should be eating, so like I said, frosted cakes are an occasional treat in our home.

I have however created a tradition for myself of making a home-made birthday cake for all our birthdays. It was our daughter’s birthday early this month and she’s lucky that her summer break from college is such that she’s at home to celebrate it. The occasion called for a buttercream frosted cake, and I thought I’d make one that wasn’t in the usual chocolate or vanilla flavours.

I’m generally restricted to simple cakes when it comes to making festive cakes because of my lack of expert piping skills and a non-availability of decorative ingredients (like fancy sprinkles and all that stuff) in the stores here. You can see what I mean if you look at my earlier birthday cakes like the Alcohol-free Tiramisu Cake, an Easy Chocolate Cake with Cocoa Frosting, Chocolate Cake With Vanilla Buttercream or the Marbled Chocolate Cakewith Chocolate Buttercream

The fanciest I ever got was with the Cookies Cream Rosette Cake With Classic Vanilla Buttercream that I baked last year for her eighteenth birthday. You will notice that there’s a common chocolate/ vanilla flavour dominating the cakes I’ve mentioned so far and that’s because those are the birthday girl’s favourites!

So, as I was saying, I decided to go with a Lime Cake and Lime Buttercream (lemons are rare in India) this time as that’s a flavour she has come to love. As far as decorating this cake went, all it needed was the cake, the buttercream and a teaspoon!

In India, it’s not easy to find lemons but you can get limes aplenty all the year round. Limes are much sourer than limes so if you’re making this cake with lemons then please adjust the amount of juice you use accordingly. I made mango curd because we get the best mangoes ever during this time of the year. Even if it wasn’t the season for mangoes, I’d still make my own mango curd because it’s easy enough to make, and it’s also not available in the stores here.

