This month’s challenge for the Daring Bakers baking club was Dorie Greenspan’s Perfect Party Cake. The recipe is from Baking: From My Home to Yours, a book that has been in heavy rotation on the food blog circuit lately for its classic recipes and straightforward techniques. Since this month was my mother’s birthday, I made the cake for this occasion, and thankfully our host Morven gave us a lot of room for personalization - we has pretty much free rein apart from the basic cake recipe and buttercream or whipped cream frosting options.
Although I’ll be first to admit that my layer cake skills could use some work, I took my time with this one and I think it turned out reasonably well. I prefer dense chocolate monstrosities or fruit desserts for my own birthday or special occasions, so could really use some slicing, piping, and decorating practice - and I’ve recently been scoping for a local cake class to help remedy this. For this cake, though, I liked the simplicity of whipped cream, and for some visual interest added a little polka-dot pattern with inverted chocolate chips.
As for the interior, Mom had some very clear ideas about what she wanted in her cake. :) She was hoping for something that would combine all her favorite flavors in one: mini chocolate chips, raspberry, banana, and whipped cream. This part was nearly as much of a challenge as the Daring Bakers recipe itself(!), but I managed to hit all the elements and it ended up being quite good. I do think the mini chips may have weighed the batter down a bit and prevented it from rising as much as it could have (my layers were barely taller than an inch), but the cake was still fluffy and delicate-tasting.
My final changes to Dorie’s basic recipe were as follows: I skipped the lemon flavorings and added 1/4 cup mini chocolate chips to the cake batter. Instead of the buttercream, I used 1 pint of cream whipped with 2 tablespoons sugar for filling and finishing. I also left out the coconut. The layers were filled with alternating raspberry curd and banana pastry cream.
Overall, everyone was very pleased with the cake. I would probably make a thicker raspberry filling next time, and also maybe reduce the baking time to 25 minutes - the cake edges were getting a bit too dark at 30 minutes. This sort of cake is a great addition to my repertoire, though, and I’ll very likely make it again since it’s so easy to vary the filling and flavorings to suit nearly anyone’s wishes. Check out the other Perfect Party Cakes by visiting the Daring Bakers Blogroll, which keeps track of our ever-expanding numbers. Many thanks to Morven of Food Art and Random Thoughts, who hosted this month’s challenge!