Lemon-raspberry cake with "magical" lemon cream cheese frosting

I have been so excited about the new recipe for "magical" frosting I just found over at Mel's Kitchen Cafe, that I have made it three times in the last three days! :) Still, I made it in the original form the first time, using almond extract the second time, and changing it up just a couple more notches the third time- read below. :)

My daughter, Anna, helped me with the baking of the cake and making of the frosting, as well as assembly and decoration of the cake. She is so eager to learn, at just 8 years of age, I can't contain my joy! :) Here she is, proud with the cake we created together:

For the cake, we used my favorite vanilla cake recipe (see here), adding to it at the end the zest of one whole lemon and 1 tsp of lemon extract. We put raspberry preserves between the two layers of the cake and then frosted with the magical frosting (see here) and the following modifications:

Magical lemon cream cheese frosting
I substituted 8 oz of the butter in the base recipe with 8 oz of cream cheese,  added 1/2 tsp of lemon extract, the zest of one whole lemon, and freshly squeezed juice of 1/2 lemon.

This variation definitely resulted in a softer frosting which would have been close to impossible to pipe, but in our case, that wasn't a problem- we wanted to simply smother it on the cake and make it very homemade looking. We achieved our goal! :) The frosting- and cake- were delicious! Tangy and sweet at the same time, moist and irresistible- all guests went for seconds!

We used the zester to garnish to top of the cake with more lemon zest in pretty long strips:

My little hostess serving the lemon-raspberry cake to our guests with a sweet smile:  :)