Texas Lovin'

A good friend of ours is moving away.  BOO!  And in the midst of dealing with the fact that her husband already had to move to start his new job while she is parenting their three kids and having their house on the market, her youngest love had his first birthday.  The girl has enough on her plate! So when she asked if I would mind making a cake for his birthday party/going away party, of course I told her to just leave it to me.  She wanted a "Texas" theme, since they are moving away from here (WAH!) to New Jersey.  Then she emailed me photos of cakes she had seen online that she particularly liked and I got very scared.  VERY.  We were talking multi-tiered cakes with all sorts of fancy Texas decorations!  Yikes.  Oh, and did I mention that this little baby-love is highly allergic to eggs?  As is his brother?  Yeah.  So this needed to be a super fancy EGGLESS tiered cake.  Ummmm.  Yes, of course I can do that!

Rainbow Birthday Cake!

The clever girl is 6 years old!  It is hard to believe.  I made her a Rainbow Cake for her birthday, as a total surprise.   She had asked for a chocolate cake, and since I couldn't do a chocolate rainbow cake, I used chocolate buttercream frosting for the outside of the cake.  I also made some homemade chocolate ice cream, which you will see on a separate post.  (It was DELICIOUS, so make sure to check back for that recipe!!)
 

As I said, the rainbow part was a surprise for the clever girl, so she was introduced to the cake as it looked like this.  Her comment was, "Momma, this cake is GIANT!"  Uh-huh, just you wait!  Mr. Clever Mom and Auntie took her to another room while I cut the cake. We told her there was a surprise in the cake and had fun guessing what the surprise might be...  A giraffe inside?  Molten chocolate?  A rattlesnake?  A big rock? 

It's a rainbow!  She was thrilled.  And very fast to point out that there are 6 colors in my rainbow and she turned 6!  Uh, yeah, that was intentional.... NOT!  But isn't it great that it worked out that way?? 

Then she looked at the rest of the cake.....

"How'd you DO that???"

Indeed.  It actually isn't hard, it is just more time consuming than making a solid colored cake, as every layer cooks separately.  And since I only have two 8-inch cake pans, it took a while to get all of the layers baked.  The key is to start out with a great "white" cake recipe.  I used a recipe from Cooks Illustrated, which I had never used before, and will now probably become my go-to white cake recipe.  I think finding a good white cake recipe can be hard, but this one really hit it right.  It is delicious! 

White Layer Cake
adapted from Cooks Illustrated
alterations for Rainbow Cake in italics
makes 1 double-layer 9-inch cake (6-layer 8-inch rainbow cake)

Ingredients:
2 1/4 cups cake flour, plus more for dusting pans
1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
6 large egg whites, at room temperature
2 teaspoons almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened but still cool
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple GEL food color.  (Liquid color will not be vibrant enough and could change the structure of the batter - too much added liquid)

Instructions:
Set oven rack in the center, and heat to 350F.  Butter two 9-inch round cake pans (8-inch round cake pans), line bottoms with parchment, butter parchment, and dust with flour.  (Weigh your empty mixing bowl).

Pour milk, egg whites, and extracts into a 2-cup glass measure and whisk until blended.  In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix the cake flour, sugar, baking powder and salt at low speed.  Add the butter and continue to beat until the mixture resembles moist crumbs.  There should be no powdery streaks.

Add all but 1/2 cup of the milk mixture to the crumbs and beat at medium speed for 1 1/2 minutes.  Add the remaining 1/2 cup of the milk mixture and beat for 30 seconds more.  Stop mixer and scrape the bowl.  Return the mixer to medium speed and mix for 20 seconds.

Divide the batter evenly between the two prepared cake pans.  (Weigh the full mixing bowl and subtract the weight of the empty bowl.  This is the weight of the batter.  Divide that number by 6 and this is the amount of batter you will put into 6 separate bowls.  Gently whisk several drops of gel color into each bowl.  The color of the cake will be the same as the color of the unbaked batter, so mix in enough color to get the vibrancy that you want.  Pour two of the colors into the prepared 8-inch pans.  If you have more than two 8-inch pans, lucky you!  Do more!  However for baking purposes, you should still bake only two at a time.  If you need to re-use the pans, make sure you wipe them out each time, and run cool water over the outside bottom of the pan so that the pan is no longer hot before you re-butter, re-parchment, re-butter, and re-flour the pans.)  Use a rubber spatula to spread the batter to the pan walls and smooth the top.  Place the pans into the oven, at least 3 inches apart and 3 inches from the oven walls.    Bake until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 23-25 minutes (12-13 minutes). 

Let the cakes rest in the pans for 3 minutes.  Invert onto wire racks, remove the parchment, and then re-invert onto a different wire rack.  Allow to cool completely.  (Do not worry if your rainbow layers are really thin, almost like pancakes.  Once you stack them up with layers of cream or frosting in-between, you will have a very tall cake.) 
Printable Recipe

For the layers in my cake, I used a stabilized whipped cream.  You can use whatever you want.  I thought that white in-between the rainbow layers would accent the colors nicely, and would be a tasty filling!  If you choose to use frosting, you'll probably need to double your frosting recipe to have enough.  There are several methods to stabilize whipped cream.  I found one using non-fat dry milk and decided to try that.  You can also use unflavored gelatin or cream cheese.  For this cake, I used 2 1/2 cups of whipped cream, less powdered sugar, and a mix of vanilla and almond extracts, as I like that flavor combination!

Stabilized Whipped Cream
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 TB non-fat dry milk
~1 teaspoon vanilla extract
~2 TB to 1/4 cup sifted powdered sugar, to taste
Whip the heavy whipping cream and nonfat dry milk to a soft peak stage, then add the vanilla and powdered sugar (to taste).  Whip to desired consistency.  Whipped cream can be dolloped, piped, layered, and will keep its consistency for at least 24 hours, probably more!
Printable Recipe

This cake is moist and delicious.  It really is the best white cake I have had!  The yummy cake layered with the whipped cream s divine, really. i If I made this again, I might just use the stabilized whipped cream all around the outside as well, because it tastes so good!  The chocolate buttercream is good, but nothing compares to whipped cream, I say!

Days later, the clever girl is still talking about her rainbow cake!  Success!

Birthday Cupcakes

Besides having a birthday celebration with her family and another with her friends, the clever girl also had a celebration at school!  For this one, she requested chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting!  Happy to oblige!  I made it a bit fancy by sprinkling mini pearls and pink sprinkles on the top of each one - much to the clever girl's delight!  By the way, please excuse the paper plate.  We are moving so I have already packed up all of our dishes!  Sometimes you just have to make do.  (This does not excuse the blurry photo... I can't explain that other than being frazzled and overtired! - Sorry!)

I can't take the credit for making these cupcakes, as the clever girl did most of the work!

Indeed, she says, "I'm the chef"!  She received this awesome chef hat from my mother for her birthday (thanks G!) and she LOVES to wear it and cook.  She also got a super cute chef doll, but that doesn't really have much to do with this blog, though actually the doll IS wearing a skirt with cupcakes on it, so I guess it sort-of goes, in a round about way...

Anyway, when it comes to chocolate cake, I always make Beatty's Chocolate Cake.  I know there are other chocolate cake recipes out there but nothing beats this one.  In fact if you click over to my original post with this cake, it is from the clever girl's birthday last year.  My how my little girl has grown up in a year!  *sigh*  If you don't feel like clicking over there to see the recipe, I am going to go ahead an re-post it here, because it is simply the very best chocolate cake I have EVER had. 

Beatty's Chocolate Cake
adapted from Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa

Ingredients:
Butter, for greasing the pans
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans
2 cups sugar
3/4 cups good cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup buttermilk, shaken
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee (I use decaf!)


Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter two 8-inch x 2-inch round cake pans. Line pans with parchment paper, then butter and flour the pans.

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix on low speed until combined. In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry. With mixer still on low, slowly add the coffee and stir just to combine, scraping the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pans and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 30 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack and cool completely.
Printable Recipe

I made Chocolate Buttercream Frosting for these cupcakes.  It is delectable.  Very creamy and chocolaty and really, just perfect!

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
adapted from Savory Sweet Life

Ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened but not melted
3 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract OR 1 teaspoon almond extract
4 TB milk or heavy cream

Instructions:
In a mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter for a few minutes on medium speed.  Turn off the mixer.  Sift 3 cups of powdered sugar and the cocoa into the mixing bowl on top of the butter.  Stir a little with a rubber spatula just to start things off so you don't coat the kitchen with sugar when you turn on the mixer.  Turn your mixer on to the lowest speed and mix until the sugar and cocoa are absorbed by the butter.  Increase the mixer speed to medium and add the salt, vanilla extract and milk/cream.  Beat for 3 minutes.  If your frosting needs a stiffer consistency, add a bit more sifted sugar.  If your frosting needs to be thinned out, add additional milk/cream one tablespoon at a time.
Printable Recipe

If you ever have a need for chocolate cake and/or chocolate frosting, look no further.  Seriously, this is the best.  I gave a cupcake to the woman ordering the shades for our new home and she later told me it was the best cupcake she had ever eaten!  I take no credit.  It is the amazing recipes (and the awesome junior chef)! 

A Pool Party!

Every year, the clever girl and one of her friends have their birthday parties together.  I am so lucky in that one of my good friends happened to have her first child less than 2 weeks after I had mine!  We have done joint birthday parties for the past 4 years!  Being June, in Texas, the only logical sort of birthday party to have is one that involves water, and my friend happens to have a pool!  Thank goodness!  We have done a princess/pirate party, an under the sea party, a beach party, and now a pool party.  (We have run out of theme ideas!)  Regardless, the main attraction is the pool!

This year, my wonderful friend did almost all of the preparations, since I had just had a baby and was in the midst of moving.  THANK YOU, FRIEND!!  My sole responsibility was the cake.  So I created a pool at the beach cake.  The cake itself is a vanilla buttermilk cake with classic buttercream frosting. 

Here is a list of the other fun cake components:
Sand:  ground graham crackers mixed with white/clear large grain decorating sugar for extra sparkle
Water:  frosting with some blue coloring gel
Beachball:  a peppermint ball
Characters:  honey Teddy Grahams floating in peach gummy rings or laying on  towels made of organic fruit strips cut into tiny rectangles
Cocktail umbrella for the beach umbrella
Toy palm trees from the party supply store

Originally, I was only going to make the cake, but I saw my friend the night before the party and she mentioned that over 30 people had RSVP'd so I freaked out a bit and made a last minute batch of cupcakes!  And I am glad I did - the kids loved the cupcakes and they sure look cute, don't they?

Besides cake, we also had:

 Nutter-Butter flip-flops

Rainbow fruit skewers

This was my friend's idea - brilliant, isn't it?  Colorful and fun!

 Mini-caprese salads (cherry tomato, basil, and mozzarella ball drizzled in balsamic vinegar)

Pasta salad with veggie pasta, veggie cups with ranch dressing at the bottom, jello jigglers (always a huge hit) and Sangria (for the parents, of course!)

Another home run birthday party!  I say, my friend and I have this down to a science now.  What will we ever do if our kids decide they want to have separate birthday parties? 

Vanilla Buttermilk Cake

adapted from Sweetapolita

Ingredients:

4 whole eggs, at room temperature

2 egg yolks, at room temperature

1 1/4 cups buttermilk, at room temperature

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3 cups cake flour, sifted

2 cups sugar

1 TB plus 1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350F.  Butter the bottoms and sides of 3 8-inch round cake pans, like bottoms with parchment, and butter the parchment rounds.  Dust pans with flour.  (Note:  If you do not have 3 pans and need to reuse one to bake the rest of the cake, make sure you rinse the pan in cold water before re-buttering/flouring.  You don't want to put the batter in a hot pan!)

Whisk the eggs, yolks, 1/4 cup of the buttermilk, and vanilla together in a medium bowl.

Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large mixer bowl.  Add the butter and remaining 1 cup of buttermilk and blend with the mixer on low speed.  Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  

Add the egg mixture in 3 additions.  Scrape the sides and bottom of the mixer bowl and mix only until incorporated.

Divide the batter evenly among the 3 prepared pans, using a kitchen scale to achieve 3 even layers.  If you have never done this, you need to make sure you know the weight of your EMPTY mixer bowl first.  Then see what the bowl weighs with all of the batter inside.  Subtract the empty bowl weight from the full bowl weight and you have the weight of the batter.  Divide that by 3 - this is how much batter goes into each cake pan- we'll call this "one layer weight".  Subtract the one layer weight from the full bowl weight.  This is how much your mixing bowl should weigh after you fill the first cake pan.  Subtract the one layer weight again, and this is how much your mixer bowl will weigh after you fill the second cake pan.  If you did your math right, what you have left should be the amount of the empty bowl plus one layer weight!  

For visual learners:

FULL BOWL WEIGHT - EMPTY BOWL WEIGHT = BATTER WEIGHT

BATTER WEIGHT/3 = ONE LAYER WEIGHT

FULL BOWL WEIGHT - ONE LAYER WEIGHT = amount in bowl after first cake pan is filled

FULL BOWL WEIGHT - ONE LAYER WEIGHT - ONE LAYER WEIGHT = amount in bowl after second cake pan is filled, which should be equal to 

EMPTY BOWL WEIGHT + ONE LAYER WEIGHT

Bake the cake layers for 28-32 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean and the cake begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.  Let the layers cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then carefully turn out onto a cooling rack and allow to cool completely.

Printable Recipe

Classic Buttercream Frosting

adapted from Sweetapolita

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

6 cups powdered (confectioners) sugar

1/2 cup whipping cream

2 TB vanilla extract

1 TB water

pinch of salt

Directions:

Beat the butter and sugar on low speed in an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment until just combined.  Increase the speed to medium and beat until all of the sugar is incorporated into the butter, about 3 minutes.

Add the whipping cream, vanilla extract, water and salt, and whip on medium-high until fluffy and smooth, about 3 more minutes.  If the consistency is too thick, add more water 1 teaspoon at a time and then whip again.  If the consistency is too thin, add more powdered sugar a few tablespoons at a time, until you achieve your desired consistency. 

Printable Recipe

This recipe makes a classic vanilla (white) cake.  It is moist and flavorful and perfect for any birthday (or other celebration) cake, pool party or not!

The Anniversary Cake Project: I did it!

Additional installments of the Anniversary Cake Project:  lemon cake, lemon curd, lemon butter-cream icing

Ta-da!  Success!  I can hardly believe it!  I guess my Hermione Granger moments paid off, as all of my research really did help me create a tiered cake!

I brought the cake to my parent's church in the separate layers as you saw in the most recent post regarding the lemon butter-cream icing.  Here is a great trick for when you have to transport cake:  You know the shelf liner you can use in your kitchen shelves and drawers that is sort of foamy and comes in a roll?  I think a variety of brands make it.  Anyway, cut a square or strip of it and place it under whatever the cake is sitting in (a box or plate or whatever), so it is between the box and the car floor.  For example, I used many copy paper box lids for transport.  So, I put a piece in a box lid underneath the square cake board that held the 9-inch round cake.  Then I put another piece on the floor of my sister's trunk, and put the box lid on top of that.  Now the cake was safe from sliding around inside the box, and the box was safe from sliding around in the car!  All of my layers were carefully put into the car and we all said a bunch of prayers on the way to church!  Appropriate, right?

At church, I set everything out and took some deep breaths before attempting to stack the tiered cake.  I used a flat metal spatula, wiggled it under the cardboard circle under the 6-inch layer and gently placed it onto the center of the 8-inch square cake, right over the support straws.  I touched the cake a bit with my fingers but made sure it was at the very bottom where I planned to put the ribbons.  I did the same thing for the  4-inch layer.  When it was all stacked, I stood back and took some more deep breaths! 

I had prepared the satin ribbon in advance.  Since butter-cream is made mostly of butter and shortening, if it actually touched satin ribbon, it would leave ugly grease spots.  No good!  So I cut the ribbons to appropriate lengths for each layer, then used double-sided tape to stick waxed paper to the back.  The waxed paper was cut to be the exact width as the ribbon, 1 1/2 inches.  That took some work but it wasn't so bad.  I rolled up each ribbon, attached a little tag notating which cake layer it was for, and put them together in a little bag to bring to the church.  At church, I just had to unroll each ribbon, gently place it around the bottom of a cake layer, and pin it into place using a straight pin.

So far, so good.  Time for the roses.  I cut the stems of the roses I intended to stick into the cake very short and wrapped them in plastic wrap.  You don't want whatever liquids that are on the inside of a flower to get into the cake.  Then I stuck the stems into the cake to secure them.   For the roses that are on the tops of the cakes, I just cut the stem all of the way off and put a tiny square of plastic wrap under the bottom of the rose before sticking it into the icing on the cake.  They stayed put!

My sister and I!

I had my parents cut the first piece of cake together, just like they did 50 years prior.  Sorry for the blurry picture... I wasn't behind the camera and I have no idea what happened!

You might notice the green punch next to my dad.  That is known as Miller Punch.  My sister made up the recipe and we use it for all events where punch is offered!  It's a secret family recipe!  Don't tell anyone....

Miller Punch
2 small containers lime sherbet
1 2l bottle of lemon-lime soda
1 large can of frozen limeade concentrate
1/2 large can of frozen lemonade concentrate

Prepare limeade and lemonade using the lemon-lime soda to replace MOST of the water.  You might use a bit of water depending on how zippy you want it to be.  Scoop the lime sherbet into a punch bowl.  Pour the lemon-limeade over the sherbet and serve!

To mix things up a bit (or to get a pink punch if that is desired) you can also use raspberry sherbet and pink lemonade.  Also very yummy!
Printable Recipe

Back to the cake!  I estimate that there were about 60-70 people at my parent's reception and I miraculously made the right amount of cake!  I sliced the cakes into pieces about 1 inch wide and about 3-4 inches long.  I did not use the concentric circles method of cutting cakes.  I find that too tricky.  I just cut slices as if the round cakes were actually square, slicing off about an inch at a time.  I saved the top piece for my parents, so that was not consumed.  In the end, I had a little less than 1/2 of the 8-inch square cake left.  In my opinion, this turned out perfectly!  We could have fed a few more people but had enough to take home and have leftover cake a couple of times.  Phew!

Are you wondering about how the cake tasted?  Delicious!  I wished I had gotten it out of the refrigerator a little bit earlier, as the cake part wasn't quite at room temperature, but it was pretty close.  The cake had a great texture, very lemony and light, the curd had a good tang and the butter-cream was zippy!  If you didn't like lemon, this was the wrong party for you, that is for sure!  My sister and I joked that we were preventing scurvy in our guests!

I did freeze that top layer of cake for my parents.  I don't know how good it will turn out, but here is what I did:  I stuck the cake as-is into the freezer (without the roses, obviously)  to get it somewhat frozen before wrapping in any way.  After about 6 hours, I took it out and wrapped it 3 times in plastic wrap.  Then I stuck the cake into a freezer zip-lock bag and sucked the air out of the bag with a straw.  I put this bag into another freezer bag and used my straw trick again.  The point is to get as much air out of the bags as possible, as any extra air will dry out the cake.  Ideally, you should put the cake into some sort of box to protect it from other things in the freezer, but I could not find one.  My parents will just have to be careful in their freezer! 

I really can't believe how great these cakes turned out!  It was a great learning opportunity for me and I really enjoyed putting it all together.  Something to check off of my bucket list!

The Anniversary Cake Project: Lemon Butter-cream Icing

Additional installments of the Anniversary Cake Project:  lemon cake, lemon curd

With a lemon cake and lemon curd filling, it seemed natural that I should have lemon butter-cream icing.  Though I am a fan of Swiss meringue butter-cream, I chose not to use this for the anniversary cake project.   I did a traditional butter cream, with butter and shortening.  I based the recipe off of the Repressed Pastry Chef's Buttercream Dream Icing.  This is a great butter-cream recipe.  You might want to print it out because it is a good standby.  By the way, the cake in the photo above looks lopsided but it wasn't that way in person!

It is hard to figure out how much icing you might need to frost a cake.  I found some chart (I think it was Wilton) which indicated that for the sizes of cakes I was making, I would need to make 4 batches.  Each batch makes 4 cups of icing so that is a ton!  Above are the ingredients for 4 batches of icing.  Do you see the three bags of confectioner's sugar?  Yikes!

Anyway, I wanted to make the icing nice and zippy to go with the cake, so I added a teaspoon of lemon extract and 2 teaspoons of lemon zest to each batch.  It was delicious!

Mermaids and Pirates Birthday Cake

As I have mentioned, the clever girl turned 4 and had a joint birthday party with the son of one of our friends.  We do a swim party each year, and this year we chose the theme Mermaids and Pirates.  I wanted a fun cake so I did a little internet searching and I found a really cool cake idea here.    When I read the reviews I realized I would have to make a few changes, plus that cake was a only a pirate ship and I needed to incorporate a mermaid!  So, I made the pirate ship, placed it in the ocean, and put a mermaid on a rock. 

The pirate ship and the rock are made of chocolate cake, and the ocean is white cake.  We'll do the pirate ship cake first!  I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe for the pirate cake.  Seriously, this is the most moist and delicious cake, you will be amazed.  Print the recipe below and throw away all other chocolate cake recipes.  I mean it!  It is that good.

Personal-Sized Red Velvet Cake

You may recall in my last post that I was baking for a small army event. A few days before the event, my friend organizing said event called and mentioned that one of the guests would be celebrating her 40th birthday that night. Don't you think we should have a cake for her? Of course everyone needs a cake on their birthday! So I told her I would see what I could do.

Hmmm, I didn't want to do a chocolate cake, since the rest of the group would be getting the Texas Sheet Cakes. And I didn't want to go back to the grocery store (yet again) so all of the ingredients needed to be naturally occurring in my kitchen. Ah-ha! Red Velvet Cake! That is definitely a special cake. There is nothing like slicing into a red velvet cake and seeing that red pop. I just have to smile when I see that red cake! Decision made!

Carrot Cake Battle, part 2 - Bunny Cake!

Bunny cakes!  Bunny cakes are part of my husband's family's Easter tradition.  However, they made theirs with banana bread on the inside.  When I entered the family equation I was totally fine with bunny cakes for Easter but thought they should be made of carrot cake instead.  I mean, bunnies are full of carrots, right?   And honestly, my husband's favorite cake is carrot cake, so why wouldn't I do BUNNY carrot cake??  Thus our family tradition is to have carrot cake at Easter time, most likely shaped like a bunny. 

Back to my tried and true most favorite carrot cake recipe ever.  It is Bill's Big Carrot Cake, by Dorie Greenspan.  Whenever I make this recipe I am again amazed at how delicious it truly is.  You might note that unlike the Confetti Cake Carrot Cake, this cake has more spices, coconut, and raisins inside.

Baby Bootie Cakes

I love to bake.  So when some women at my church got together to plan a baby shower, I offered to make the cakes!  The mommy-to-be grew up in the church and knows everyone, so the entire church was invited!  Luckily, we go to a small/mid-sized church, but still that is a lot of people.  And for some reason RSVP-ing does not seem to really be done anymore (why is that, anyway??), so we had no idea how many people to expect.


Now seriously, I don't know why I didn't just make a sheet cake and some cupcakes or something and call it a day.  Well, maybe I do know why.  Because I am a crazy person and I invited the challenge for doing something out of the ordinary.  I originally found the idea for the baby bootie cakes here on Martha Stewart's site, but they were for numerous tiny cakes and that seemed like too much work.  (???)  So I decided to make 2 ginormous baby booties because for some reason that seemed easier.  (Really??  Easier??  Oh, boy...)

For one of the cakes, I used the recipe for Perfect Party Cakes by Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.  It really does make the perfect party cake.  Unlike a lot of white cakes, it has the right amount of lemon zest to give it some zip, and the cake itself is light and delicious.  It has become one of  my go-to cake recipes!  Try it.  I did not use the buttercream from this recipe or the filling, for no reason other than I wanted to try something different.  Dorie suggests spreading raspberry preserves over the layers.  I alternated between raspberry filling and lemon curd.  For the icing, I used a swiss meringue buttercream.  It was my first time trying this one and it was WONDERFUL.  So yummy.