To say I am a cake baker is a gross exaggeration. Sure, I've baked cakes; I've baked cakes my whole life. But they have mostly been the typical homemade cake where the frosting is spread on and maybe a lame rose or two decorates the top. Recently, my daughter and I have been trying to perfect our baking techniques in both taste and design. We have had quite a few giggles along the way.
I made this cake for a friend of mine. She is getting it later today and I hope she is ready for it. I told her to make sure to serve extra drinks before dessert time. This is a triple layer vanilla bean cake with raspberry buttercream filling and vanilla bean buttercream on the exterior. I might mention that I baked and decorated this cake on a perfect buttercream day so I can't use that as an excuse. It was about 48 degrees and cloudy...buttercream heaven for a cake maker.
The layers are up and the crumb coating is finished, sort of. The cake gets refrigerated at this point to firm up before decorating. I might have been better off just sticking a live flower on top of this and calling it a day. Sometimes artsy is better.
And then the supposedly fun part starts. All I can say is that I learned A LOT while baking this cake. #1....I have a lot of practicing to do. #2....You really must have the right tools to make a perfect cake...I do not. #3....a cake needs to look perfect to pass the muster of a beautiful cake. Even a tiny flaw makes it look very amateurish. (See above for reference.) #4...there is no shame in bakery bought cakes.
My mental vision of my perfect princess cake faded quickly. This cake will forever be known to me as my Cake of Swears. It is filled with them.
I had to make the actual cake part twice because of a mistake. I ended up with this second 'dummy' cake which I made with all the leftovers. The Blog Tech and his father polished off quite a bit of it and said it was wonderful. They aren't the best critics...they've said this same thing about any cake they've ever tasted.
I did manage to make some cupcakes for the Blog Tech's kids too. Onward and upward....the cake baking learning curve begins.
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