My FIRST Daring Bakers Challenge

These last couple of months I have been bored with my cooking and decided to browse some cooking blogs that I stumbled upon. I found a really cool food blog that I found some great recipes on and read about a group that bakes a different recipe together each month. This group is called the Daring Bakers and is the real reason that I created this food blog. I joined the group last month and received my challenge for March 2008. The challenge was to make a cake named, "The Perfect Party Cake". This cake recipe is from the recipe book, "Baking from my home to yours" by Dorie Greenspan (Who is the best-selling author of Baking with Julia Child) I was instantly intimidated! Oh my, a butter cream frosting, 4 layers and filling..... The last cake that I remember making from scratch was when I was a teenager and decided to make my dad a birthday cake. It was pretty awful and I still get teased about it.

I decided that I needed to make this cake for Easter Dinner Dessert. Easter morning the kids hunted for their baskets and then it was time to bake. I got the Kitchen Aid out and away I went. I couldn't believe it; I was making this cake and actually had some confidence that my family would be able to eat it. I got the cake batter into the pans and waited patiently the 30 minutes for the cakes to bake. I just knew that all the running around the kids were doing was bound to make these cakes not rise. I pulled the cakes out and they looked just perfect. Perfect until I flipped them out of the pans and saw that they didn't rise real high. So, I decided that I needed to make the recipe again to make sure that I didn't screw something up (as this is common around here!!) I quickly made another 2 cakes and of course they turned out the same. Oh well, I now had 4 layers that would look like a decent size cake when it was finished. (Decent size was an UNDERSTATEMENT!) I proceeded to make this awesome butter cream frosting and couldn't believe that I actually made this masterpiece frosting myself! I then had to put all of this good stuff together! I started with the first layer and spread the raspberry filling onto the top of it, then put a layer of frosting. I repeated these steps until the last of the four cakes were placed onto the top. At this point I was freaking out, this cake was just crazy HUGE! I looked at this thing and just started frosting, frosting and more frosting. I am NOT by any means going to make a living by decorating cakes. The original recipe called for coconut over the butter cream, but Grandma Madeline doesn't appreciate coconut, so I just placed a few little nests of coconut and jelly beans on the top and around the bottom for a little Easter decoration. No one that ate the cake could believe that I made it. So bring on the next challenge Daring Bakers, I AM READY! Email me for the recipe if you too would like to challenge yourself!