1-2-3-4 Lemon Cake

http://www.marthastewart.com/1-2-3-4-lemon-cake

I woke up at 9 am this morning to bake this cake for Melissa and Sabrina's birthday because we're having a party at Anthony and Rita's house at 5 pm.  I thought if I started early, we could always have Plan B (replace with a store-bought cake) if my cake turned out to be a disaster.  I have always wanted to try out this Martha Stewart's lemon cake recipe because it looks so beautiful.    

Everything went pretty well until I realized I don't have two 8" round cake pans.  I was supposed to separate the batter evenly in two cake pans to bake in the oven at the same time.  I only have one cake pan and it's a holiday today and I couldn't go get another one so I decided to pour all the batter in my only cake pan and bake it.  What should have taken approx. 45 mins to bake ended up taking an hour and 30 mins.  

The cake was as solid as a rock.  The top and bottom of it and the edge were so overcooked.  It was 11 am, I was about to throw the cake away and start baking a new one.  Then I thought, how about cutting all the overcooked portion and see how bad it is in the centre?  So I turned the round cake into a square one and I also cut off the top and the bottom part of the cake.  The cake is now half the size than it should have been.  It was supposed to be a 4-layer cake and now it's only got 2 layers but it's a good thing that I got creative here... the centre of the cake is actually quite moist.  

I brought the lemon curd (that I prepared a day in advance), the strawberries and the cream to Anthony and Rita's and assembled the cake there. The cake looks not too unfortunate when it's done and the taste is quite good.  There's still a lot of room for improvement but I'm quite happy with the result.  

Special thanks to my brother in-law, Anthony, for taking the wonderful pictures!!