The much-Instagrammed spoonful of fluffy lemon cake with a dollop of pudding underneath may have popped up on your feed more than once, making it all the more easy to scroll past and forget about in the blink of an eye. What’s so special about eating pudding and cake?, you might be thinking. I’d encourage you to take another look: it’s actually one batter that bakes in two separate layers, and honestly, it’s the light, bright, luscious dessert you should be enjoying all summer long.

I was once in the early stages of recipe testing and made a cake using whipped egg whites as a leavening and binding agent. The batter was a little wonky and thin, but I baked it anyway. I knocked the cake out and was disappointed. The top was beautiful, perfectly browned and springy. But an inch below the surface was a dense mess. I hadn’t added enough egg whites to lighten and lift the batter, so the airy bits floated above the rest. That cake was a failure. Lemon pudding cake, however, uses that mistake as a technique.

Lemon curd cake batter is watery, with a seemingly scant portion of the flour used for a cake. You then carefully fold in beaten egg whites before pouring it into the cake pan. What you will definitely notice is that even though the egg whites are thoroughly folded in, they float above the rest of a deeply marigold-like, liquid batter. That batter just happens to be lemon juice, sugar, butter, egg yolks, and a tiny bit of flour. Those, my fellow bakers, are the building blocks of lemon curd.

The egg white-risen lemon curd bakes into a light cake on top, and the batter that sinks cooks into the soft, tangy, pudding-like curds you know and love. The only fuss you have to do is set up a water bath so the curds can gently set. It’s worth it.