The Perfect Party Cake That Almost Was...

Well, apparantly there is something on this great big world wide web called 'The Daring Bakers'. They have monthly challenges and they BAKE some amazing stuff. I stumbled upon it quite innocently. I was reading Jen's blog, as as per usual, she had made something AMAZING. It was this Perfect Party Cake. Of course, as per usual, her creation was GORGEOUS and PERFECT. It was my father in laws birthday and I thought to myself, 'huh, I can make that cake for him'.

Famous last words.

Now, I consider myself a pretty good cook. I can throw things together with the best of them, but I am the first to admit I am a pretty half assed baker. Cooking is creativity, but baking, baking is CHEMISTRY. And cakes?? Pretty, perfect party cakes?? Well, those are pure CALCULUS. At least for me. I am messy and don't have the patience for perfection. Plus, you have to get those pesky measurements right and pans lined with parchment paper and so on and so forth.

I could have stuck with my tried and true chocolate cake that I am quite famous for, but Jen's cake was so amazing and pretty, that I found myself inspired.

So, join me as I make HALF of a perfect party cake! I am just putting the pictures that I liked up, they may or may not be helpful, so if you want stuff like the recipe and useful step by steps, you are going to have to refer back to Jen's blog!

One thing I loved about this cake was the lemon! I love lemon and I love lemon zest:



In this recipe, you had to mix the sugar with the zest, I used fructose:



So, I followed the directions perfectly, and I think my cake pans were a WEE bit wider than they should have been, but when I took them out of the oven, they were FLAT as pancakes! My hopes for a 4 layer cake were quickly dashed, but luckily, I have been blessed with a quick thinking mind and I decided right then and there to cut them in half and make 4 layers of HALF of a Perfect Party Cake:



Jen says that maybe the egg whites caused the cakes to collapse, and speaking of egg whites, on to the frosting. This frosting was some weird merangue number. I have never made a buttercream frosting that had egg whites in it, but I gave it go.

nice peaks:



I had to add an entire box of icing sugar to get a good spreadable consistency:



And lots more fresh lemon juice:




Then came the task of putting it all together. Here is where I got a bit nervous. The cake consists of 4 layers of raspberry jam, lemon butter cream frosting and lemon cake. So, I got to stacking my 4 halves.

First, homemade raspberry jam:



The recipe called for SEEDLESS raspberry jam.

Ummm, really?? NO.

I just used good old wholesome regular jam. Cake, frosting, jam. Cake, frosting, jam. Cake, frosting, jam. Cake, frosting:



Then I covered it with the rest of the frosting:



Topped the sucker with fresh raspberries:



And enjoyed every bite: