Mimosa Cake with Lemon Cream Filling

Mimosa cake is a classic of the Italian bakery and it is a perfect dessert both to celebrate Women’s Day and the beginning of Springtime. Traditionally, it is filled with pastry cream and its main feature is to be covered with soft cubes of sponge cake that resemble mimosa flowers. Today I would like to propose this variant with a lemon cream filling that gives your Mimosa cake a really fresh and light taste. To soak the sponge cake, moreover, I suggest to use a limoncello flavored syrup, to further accentuate the lemon taste. Limoncello is a very popular and traditional Italian lemon liqueur mainly produced in Southern Italy, especially in the region around the Sorrentine Peninsula and the coast of Amalfi.

The lemon Mimosa cake is not difficult to prepare, but, like all layer cakes, it requires a bit of manual skill and time. Let’s say that I spent more than half a day to it, but you can split the work in two different days, for example, preparing the sponge cake, the lemon pastry cream and the syrup the day before and assembling the cake the next day.

To prepare the sponge cake, I used a single 24 cm diameter cake mold from which I cut a smaller 16 cm diameter cake, enough for 6 people. I then cut out the cubes to decorate the lemon Mimosa cake from the remaining sponge cake. If you have smaller molds available, you can use 2 molds of 18 cm each: you will use a sponge cake to make the cake and the other to obtain the cubes for the coating.

The flower decoration was made using a piping tip for tulips from this piping decoration set and with butter cream.

If you love sponge cakes filled with pastry cream check out also this variation with cocoa sponge cake and vanilla cream and chocolate filling.

INGREDIENTS for 6 servings

FOR SPONGE CAKE

• 300 g of eggs (about 6 medium size eggs)
• 150 g of white granulated sugar
• 150 g of cake flour (low protein flour)
• 1 lemon
• butter and flour to grease the mold

FOR LEMON PASTRY CREAM

• 500 ml of milk
• 2 eggs (medium size)
• 1 egg yolk
• 150 g of white granulated sugar
• 50 g of cornstarch
• 2 lemons

FOR DIPLOMAT CREAM

• 250 g of lemon pastry cream (see previous preparation)
• 250 ml of heavy whipping cream (chilled)
• 2 tbs of confectionary sugar

FOR LIMONCELLO SYRUP

• 50 ml of water
• 50 g of granulated sugar
• 2 tbs of limoncello

PREPARATION

1. For the lemon pastry cream: pour the milk into a saucepan and add 2 lemons zest, grate only the yellow part of the lemon. Leave to infuse for at least an hour and, in the meantime, prepare the sponge cake and the syrup.
2. For the sponge cake: in a stand mixer with the whisk hook or with an electric hand mixer whip the eggs (they have to be at room temperature) with the sugar for about 15 minutes, until they are whiter and frothy. The eggs should incorporate as much air as possible and increase tree times in volume. At the end, the mixture should come down in ribbons from the whisk.
3. Add to the egg mixture the grated zest of the lemon.
4. Grease and flour a 24 cm diameter mould and turn on the oven in static mode at 170 °C.
5. Sift the flour and add it to the egg and sugar mixture.
6. Mix very gently with a rubber spatula and with circular movements from top to bottom of the mixture. If you use a stand mixer, you can give a few turns of the whisk at low speed.
7. Pour the mixture into the mold and bake for about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and immediately turn out the sponge cake onto a wire rack to cool completely.
8. For the syrup: pour the water and sugar into a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for 2 minutes, then turn off the heat and let cool.
9. Just before using the syrup, add 2 tablespoons of limoncello.
10. For the lemon pastry cream: boil the milk (with the lemon zest) with 50 g of sugar taken from the total.
11. Whip the eggs and yolk with the remaining 100 g of sugar until light and fluffy. Add the cornstarch and mix well.
12. When the milk comes to a boil, pour the egg mixture into the milk and start stirring with a hand whisk. When the cream begins to set, whirl some more quickly, remove from heat and pour into a bowl.
13. Cover the cream with a sheet of plastic wrap so that the surface does not dry out and let it cool completely.
14. When the cream is cold, whip (bowl, whisk and heavy cream must be chilled from the refrigerator) the heavy cream to stiff peaks with the confectionary sugar (to be added halfway while whipping).
15. Weigh 250 g of lemon pastry cream and add the whipped cream stirring gently with a rubber spatula with movements from the bottom up so as not to disassemble the cream.
16. Cut out a circle of 16 cm diameter from the sponge cake and make 3 layers of equal thickness.
17. Take the first layer, the base layer, and place it on a piece of baking paper a little larger than your sponge cake. Using a brush, lightly soak the surface of the cake with the limoncello syrup.
18. Pour half of the lemon pastry cream in the center of the cake and spread it evenly with an icing spatula or fill a piping bag with a round piping tip and make a spiral from the center to the edge of the sponge cake.
19. Overlap the second layer of sponge cake, brush with the syrup and fill with the other half of lemon pastry cream.
20. Complete with the last layer of sponge cake and brush with the syrup.
21. Coat the surface and edges of the cake with the diplomat cream. Level the surface and the edge with the icing spatula.
22. Take a metal disc, such as the bottom of a tart mold (the ones with the removable bottom), slightly smaller than your cake and pass it under the baking paper. Lift the cake and cut off the excess paper that is overhanging the sponge cake.
23. Gently slide the cake onto the plate where you will be serving it and slide out the metal disk. Place in the freezer to firm up for about half an hour.
24. Cut some slices from the leftover sponge cake and cut them into 1 cm cubes.
25. Take the lemon mimosa cake and cover the edges and the surface with the sponge cake cubes.
26. Keep in the refrigerator until serving.