The Perfect Party Cake

Saturday evening, we drove to St.Vital for a friend's 31st Birthday BBQ. I have know R, my friend, since our parents went to the same church. This is where we met. We ended up both volunteering at the St.Boniface General Hospital Gift Shop together as well and spent our time exploring the ware and trying on silky scarves that would blow in the wind from the fans. Since then, we have each gone through our academic careers, found careers and husbands. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding and we attended their beautiful marriage ceremony as well. Her husband V was definitely spoiled by all the wonderful food that R made for him that night. Luckily, we were all privileged enough to enjoy the quinoa and veggie salad, the creamy broccoli salad, the home made falafals that she was cooking in oil when we arrives, the fresh fruit, brie and balsamic vinegar on slices of french bread, and many other treats. The piece de resistance of any birthday meal however is always the ending. The crescendo. The cake.

For V's dessert, R made a lemon poppy seed cake layered with fresh strawberries and white chocolate meringue icing. 

V's 31st Birthday Cake

The crumb was quite nice. Light but dense. A substantial cake that held together beautifully in an impressive 4 layers of height. The flavours were very subtle and light.

The visual impact of the cake was my favorite part. It looked impressive and definitely demanded attention from all of those in the room as it was cut. That is the kind of cake that I want to make for my grandmother's 80th birthday.

Lemon Poppy Seed Cake with Strawberries and White Chocolate Meringue Icing

When I got home from the party, I had a determined plan to find a baking book that my parents had bought for me last Christmas. I went upstairs, gingerly stepping around 2x4s with nails sticking out, and precariously stacked building materials and boxes, until I found some boxes that looked like they might have books in it. After some rummaging, I made my way back downstairs, smiling and holding an enormous book close to my chest, like a treasure.

Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From My Home to Yours". I knew that there were impressive cakes in that book and that my eye had always been drawn back to something called The Celebration Cake.



Click here for where to buy this book

Dorie also has other cookbooks, one notable Baking With Julia. I remember reading that she worked as a pastry chef in a restaurant where she made the same chocolate cake over and over. Bored with it, she decided to make some improvements to it using her intuitive talents, and the customers loved it! Her boss did not love that she had the gall to make changes and fired her. Getting to leave with her new recipe turned out to be a blessing in disguise however. There is also a blog called Tuesdays With Dorie in which a group of bakers chose different recipes from her books and each person must make that recipe on a certain Tuesday.

Anyhow. The recipe I am 95% sure on making for my grandma is one of Dorie's Celebration Cakes:

The Perfect party Cake. Dorie describes it as "snow white, with an elegant light crumb and an easy-going nature: it always bakes up perfectly; it is delicate on the tongue but sturdy in the kitchen - no fussing when it comes to slicing the layers in half or cutting tall, beautiful wedges for serving; and, it tastes just as you'd want a party cake to taste - special."

Let me tell you, if that were a personal ad in the paper, I would be calling that number!

Does anything sound more appealing to you than that description?

Dorie's Perfect Party Cake

If that hasn't convinced you yet, read more.

"The base recipe is for a cake flavoured with lemon, layered with a little raspberry jam and filled and frosted with a classic (and so simple) pure white lemony hot-meringue butter cream, but because the elements are so fundamental, they lend themselves to variation, making the perfect cake not just perfect, but also versatile."

Yup, this sounds like my kind of recipe. I do think that everything about this sounds great. After reading through the recipe, the only changes I might make are to buy a vanilla bean for this instead of extract (never used one but this is a very special occasion) and perhaps use strawberry jam instead of raspberry. Although, the tartness of raspberries with the freshness of lemon and sweetness of butter cream is a classic combination, so, we'll see. I will likely also add in some lemon zest to the cake, to get that extra little punch of flavour.

There are 2 pages of directions for this cake, but I am ready to tackle it.

This will be a methodical labour of love and I look forward to it.