Let Them Eat Cake!!!

Oh heck!!! Is today the 30th of March??? What with Easter last weekend, and the time going ahead this weekend, I almost forgot! It IS! It IS!!! It's Daring Baker's Challenge day! It almost, but not quite, slipped my mind!



Oh what a delicious challenge we had this month too! This month's hostess Morven of Rosa's Yummy Yums chose the recipe Perfect Party Cake from Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking With Dorie. (One of my most favouritest baking books of all!)

This truly was a challenge to me this month. I had left it to the last minute and, to be perfectly honest, we have been really caked out this month. After all there IS only two of here living at Oak Cottage, but then again . . . at the same time . . . I had been really looking foward to making it and putting my own unique stamp on it. And so, with that in mind, yesterday morning I pulled out all my baking equipment, got my creative juices flowing, and got stuck in to the challenge.



Actually the whole thing was a bit of a dawdle to bake. Just a simple cake, and, with Dorie's expert instructions, I knew it couldn't fail! I was very impressed with the pristine whiteness of the batter and I do confess I was in bliss when I licked the beaters clean. (HEY! It's a cook's prerogative after all, not to mention I don't have any children around to fight me for them!)

I was a little bit nervous when I took the baked layers out of the oven though. They didn't look quite as high as I had supposed they would be! Never mind . . . I tipped them out of the pan and on to a rack to cool. (Right side up of course!) They smelled gorgeous! I could hardly wait for them to cool before I put my stamp on them.

The buttercream icing was also not hard, as I had already pretty much conquered my fear of that in December when we did the Yule log!

I had just made a Victorian sponge last weekend and so did not want to make yet another cake with raspberry jam in the filling, and so I decided to fill mine with my homemade Lemon Curd . I also thought a layer of Orange Marmalade would go nicely in the middle, and help to counteract the sweetness of the lemon curd. I then thought (I was inspired) . . . tropical and so toasted my coconut to sprinkle all over it!!!




The end result was definitely not flat! It was high and marvelous looking, although I do confess I put perhaps a bit too much buttercream on the insides and so was starting to run out a bit when it came to frosting the outsides with it! Thank goodness for toasted coconut, which hides a multitude of sins! All in all . . . I would consider this a delicious success . . . and Todd didn't argue that point at all. All I could hear from his corner of the room was . . . the scraping of a fork and snuffling grunts of pleasure!



PS - For those who have asked, the recipe is a hyperlink in the first paragraph underneath the first photo posted. Just click on the words Perfect Party Cake and they will whiz you over to the recipe, just like magic!