I know, I know…It has been almost a month since I promised to post the recipes for the cake layers of the Buzz Lightyear cake.
Now tonight, even if I am half asleep, I’ll post them!
I used 2 basic recipes – a Devil’s food dark chocolate cake layer and All purpose yellow lemon cake. Both are from the book of Christopher Kimball ” The dessert bible”. You probably got tired of me singing him praises, but what can I do?! He is just unbelievable! I had never tried a better tasting layers in my entire life! The lemon one was moist, rich and the lemon flavor exploded in your mouth, but the chocolate one…Gosh, just by thinking of it…it is mouth watering! Rich chocolate flavor and so moist, that I bet you have never tried a better one!

First make sure that all ingredients are room temperature! It is extremely important! I finally bought a digital thermometer and I am sooo happy with it!
Next thing, preheat the oven at 350F.
Grease two 9 inch cake pans and cover the bottom of each pan with a circle of parchment paper.

Master Recipe for All-Purpose Yellow lemon cake

( IMPORTANT: This is a Single dose recipe!For the Buzz Lightyear I used  2 dose recipe and baked it in two 9″/11″ rectangular pans! If you want to make 2 sheets in two 9 ” pans, double the recipe!)

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons ( 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened but still firm ( 58-65 F)
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
5 large eggs at room temperature
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon extract
1 tablespoon ( or more) lemon zest

Mix the dry ingredients together.
In a mixer bowl stir the butter, then gradually add the sugar , beat around 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating on high speed for 30 seconds. Now at this point if your butter looks grainy- it is too cold! It has to be room temperature! The batter has to be smooth!
After all of the eggs are beaten in. beat for 1 more minute. Add one third of the flour and the milk and beat on LOW speed until incorporated. Add the vanilla and lemon, then the remaining flour and milk. Scrape the bowl and continue to mix by hand. Divide the batter between the 2 pans and bake for about 30 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking.
When the layers are ready, take them out of the oven, let them cool for 5 minutes and then take them out. At this point I left them to cool down completely, then I wrapped in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer. It is so much easier to work with frozen layers!!!
And that’s it 🙂 Sorry I don’t have a better picture of it, but you can get the idea.


The recipe for the Devil’s food cake follows.

-How to make a Buzz from fondant
http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/05/buzz-lightyear-is-born.html
-Decorating the finished Buzz figure-
http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/05/frankenbuzz-is-born-or-how-to-make-buzz.html
– How to make Buzz’s ship:
http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/05/buzz-lightyear-cake-tribute-to-buzz.html
– Decorating Buzz’s ship
http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/05/buzz-lightyear-cake-tribute-to-buzz_23.html
– The cake recipes ( yellow all purpose cake layer)
http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/06/long-overdue-cake-recipes.html
– The cake recipes 2 ( the Devil’s food cake layer)
http://www.anniesartbook.com/2008/06/long-overdue-cake-recipes-part-2.html