Daring Bakers, March: Perfect Party Cake

This Perfect Party Cake is the first Daring Baker's Challenge for the Sisters' Cafe. This is Erin, and I got to represent our sisterhood this month. :) I regret that I don't have any pictures of this cake when it was sliced. The presentation before being sliced was mediocre, but the presentation afterwards was fabulous. Each slice looked like a masterpiece, with so many layers, and a hint of red in between each (the thin layer of raspberry jam). However, I didn't think it tasted nearly as good as the slice actually looked. The buttercream frosting had THREE cubes of butter in it, and it positively grossed me out! But perhaps it was because I had to make the cake the night before (and I consequently had to refrigerate it overnight - but I let it sit at room temp for four hours before serving), so when I served it at noon the next day the buttercream was ever-so-slightly firm so it reminded me of biting into straight butter. It didn't help that the layers of frosting between the cake layers were super thick. When I took the cake out of the oven it smelled so good; I bet it would have been yummy if I could have snitched a piece right then and there. I think perhaps it lost some of it subtle lemon flavor when it was refrigerated. I am a huge advocate of serving things FRESH. But there was no way around it this time, since I wanted to serve the cake to the group of teenage girls that I teach on Sundays. (The pretty white cake went well with our Easter lesson.) Assembling the cake was fun and new... but I wouldn't want to do it all again unless I was making an incredibly delicious cake. All in all, I thought the effort of putting it all together was a lot of work for just an average tasting cake. After this experience I am even more a die-hard bundt cake fan - bundt cakes are EASY to make, easy to glaze (no frosting required!), have gorgeous presentation (before and after being sliced), and are always MOIST and delicious. But even though I wasn't thrilled with the final outcome of this layered cake, I received many compliments and at least my girls were impressed and thought it was yummy! Our hostess for this month's challenge was Food Art and Random Thoughts. You can see what other Daring Bakers thought about our challenge this month by visiting our blogroll.