Lemon Meringue Sponge Cake

Method

1. Heat oven to 170C/150C fan/gas 3. Butter a deep, loose-bottomed, 18cm cake tin and line the base with baking paper.
2. Beat the butter and caster sugar together until fluffy and pale in colour. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, then stir in the lemon zest. Fold in the flour, baking powder and ½ tsp salt, then fold in the yoghurt.
3. Spoon the mixture into the lined tin, smoothing the top with a spatula. Bake in the centre of the oven for 50-55 minutes, or until firm to the touch. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
4. Once the sponge is completely cool, slice it horizontally into 3 even halves to make a 3 tiered cake.
5. Mix the softened butter (400g) and icing sugar (800g) together until smooth and light.
6. Separate the mixture into 3 bowls: bowl 1 to have 700g of buttercream, bowl 2 to have 350g, bowl 3 to have 150g.
7. Bowl 1 is the white buttercream. To make the buttercream white, add the smallest amount of purple food dye and mix. You should see the buttercream transition from a faint yellow to a cool white.
8. Then add purple food dye to bowl 2 and mix. Then add yellow food dye to bowl 3 and mix.
9. Stack the cake by spreading some white buttercream on each tier and spoon on some lemon curd on each layer.
10. Using a palette knife or piping bag, add the yellow buttercream from the base up to the top of the first sponge.
11. Repeat the process with the white buttercream and start where the yellow buttercream left off and fill until it reaches the top of the second sponge. Save a few tablespoons of the white buttercream for later.
12. Repeat the process with the purple buttercream starting off where the white buttercream ended all the way to the top of the third sponge and ice the top of the cake.
13. Using a cake scraper or palette knife, smooth the sides of the cake until the colours gently blend into one another.
14. To make the meringue mixture, preheat oven to 100C fan.
15. Mix even weight of egg white to caster sugar – (we used 3 eggs which is roughly 100g of egg whites) in a clean bowl.
16. Place bowl on a bain marie to gently melt the sugar into the egg white – it’s ready when you can’t feel the sugar grains when rubbing some of the mixture in between your fingers.
17. Take off the heat and mix with an electric whisk until the strong, firm peaks occur.
18. To make the meringue kisses, paint streaks using gel food colouring on the inside of a piping bag – 2 streaks work well so you have a good amount of contrasting white to your colours.
19. Place meringue in a piping bag. Snip ends off, the bigger the snip the bigger the kisses.
20. Secure the greaseproof paper on a tray by using some meringue as glue. Pipe onto the paper keeping a good amount of space between each one (this encourages good air circulation for an even bake).
21. For the larger meringues, these can be spooned or piped onto a baking tray. Use a cocktail stick dipped in gel food colouring to run through the meringue to get the coloured swirls.
22. Place in oven for 40-45mins then switch off oven. Allow the meringue to cool naturally in the oven - this will prevent the meringue from cracking from a change of temperature.
23. Once the meringue has been taken out of the oven and cooled, it's time to decorate! Use your leftover buttercream to stick the meringue onto the top of the cake in any way you like. To fill in some gaps, you can pipe some buttercream dollops onto your cake as well.