Perfect Party Cake

One of my good friends had her bridal shower two weekends ago.  As a bridesmaid, I agreed to help contribute to the party food.  I first made Martha Stewart's Mexican Wedding cookies that I made about a year ago.  (See blog history)  Unfortunately during the making of these cookies, almost everything went wrong!    The first batch I dropped on the ground and in the process losing grip of the cookie sheet, the cookie sheet slid down my arm leaving a significant burn.  I will include a picture of this burn at the end of this entry.  In the second batch, somehow the oven was turned on to broil in the middle of the batch and I subsequently created some pretty black cookies.  :(  At this point, I called it quits and decided that I would try again at a later time.  It just wasn't my night.  The next evening, the night before the shower, I went to work on the Perfect Party Cake by Dorie Greenspan.  I found the recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours.    My goal was to do better than the previous evening.  (Not a lofty goal in my opinion.)  Below are some pictures of my finished product: the Perfect Party Cake.   

To see Ms. Greenspan's recipe for this cake, you can access it at the following Blog.  I am not going to post the recipe on my blog.  However, I will make comments on the recipe and discuss what I could do to improve it. 

Overall the give this recipe 4.75 out of 5 stars.  I really enjoyed this cake and everyone at the party really enjoyed eating it.  The entire cake was eaten by the next day.  Decorating it with raspberries really made the cake pop and the raspberry preserves were delish.  The cake itself was moist, light and fluffy.  The lemon was not overpowering and was a slight distinct taste.  Mmmm... I ended up using store bought buttercream icing and adding a little lemon extract to the icing to get it a slight lemony flavor.  I tried my hand at the buttercream icing recommended in this recipe, but failed to say the least.  It tasted like straight up butter.  This is the second time that I have had trouble making one of Dorie's complex icings.  I did some further research into icings after my attempt at this one which I will describe below.  My failure in this particular icing was making the meringue prior to mixing in the butter.

The learning issue in this post is buttercream icing.  Prior to this learning issue, I thought there was only one type of buttercream icing.  Buttercream, duh!  However, there are actually six types of buttercream listed on Wikipedia: Simple, Decorator's, Meringue, French, Pastry cream-type, and Fondant-type.  Simple buttercream is powdered sugar with butter.  It is the main type of buttercream that I had made prior to this recipe.  The most common bakery buttercream though is the meringue-type.  The meringue-type involves heating sugar water into a syrup and mixing it into whipped egg whites creating a meringue.  Butter is then added as the meringue cools.  The buttercream in this recipe is the meringue type.  French buttercream is similar to the meringue type except egg yolks are used instead of egg whites.  Pastry cream is used used in the pastry cream type of buttercream.The fondant-type is self explanatory in my opinion--> fondant and butter, and the decorator's type is simple buttercream that is creamed less to create a stiff paste for cake decorations.

Despite my failures though...this cake was a success.  I can't wait to make it again for another party.  It is really and truly the PERFECT Party Cake. 

Below is a picture of my awesome burn....yeah, I hope it doesn't scar too bad.