A Perfect Party Cake

One of the great things about having my daughter get married is that I now have another excuse to make a birthday cake. How fortuitous that the future son-in-law's birthday coincided with the Daring Baker's challenge to make Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake. I got the fun of making the cake and he got the fun of having a homemade birthday cake. And what a cake! I've been longing to make this cake for a while because the picture in the book (Baking, From My Home to Yours) is gorgeous. It's a fluffy, white cake, with snow white frosting, covered in coconut. Which is the reason I've never made the cake. My family all gags at coconut.

Thankfully, Morven of Food Art and Random Thoughts, the host for this month's challenge, allowed us to play with the recipe. I cheerfully omitted the coconut and added my freezer strawberry jam in between the layers.

I am not confident with this type of frosting. I'd only previously made it for the Yule Log. I'm not sure that I made it correctly. It wasn't fun to work with, but it tasted really good. I tried to carefully gauge how much frosting to put between the layers, but came up quite short when it was time to frost the outside. The future S-I-L watched in amusement as I fussed and fumed, trying to cover the cake with the inadequate supply of frosting. Finally, I decided creativity covers up a multitude of baking sins. Sliced strawberries covered up most of the cake, and a nest of shaved white chocolate neatly covers up the top. Bonus, the flavors all worked really well with the strawberry jam filling and the tart lemony flavor of the cake layers.



I loved the way the cake tasted and will definitely make it again. I need more work on the frosting, though. Thanks, Morven, for giving me a reason to try this wonderful recipe!

Check out all the other gorgeous variations on this delicious cake at the Daring Baker's Blogroll!