Daring Bakers Challenge - The Perfect Party Cake

Inside view of the Perfect Party Cake
Originally uploaded by watchjennybake.

Morven was this month's hostess for the Daring Bakers challenge, and she picked a recipe from Baking: From My Home to Yours, a cookbook I keep giving as a gift but don't actually own... yet. After the way this cake turned out, I know this cookbook will become a staple.

We were given a lot of freedom this time around - we could play with the flavors, the fillings, etc. I had a bunch of ideas but only ended up with time to make the cake once. So I went with....

"Da Lime in Da Coconut Cake."

*groan*

I know, I know, its cheesy, but now that I know you're humming it, you can watch it here too:



Now that that's over, I can talk about the changes I made to the recipe. I didn't have cake flour at home, so I used all-purpose flour with the recommended change of simply removing 2 tbsp from each cup of flour. It worked wonderfully - the end result was beautifully risen and very tender, probably because of the baking soda reacting to the buttermilk, but still - what a great end result.

Instead of lemon juice, I used lime; instead of lemon zest I used lime again. Instead of vanilla extract, I used coconut. Other than that the recipe was the same, down to using raspberry jam slightly stirred.


There was one step that I completely screwed up on, and didn't realize it until I had all of my layers stacked with jam in between The recipe actually asks you to spread buttercream between the layers as well as on the sides and top. I didn't want to risk taking the layers apart, and personally I thought this helped cut down on the super sweetness of the cake, but wouldn't want to let Dorie down.

This is not a healthy cake. If you use all the icing, this recipe has an entire pound of butter in it! But the texture of the cake and the perfect texture of the cooked buttercream makes this the perfect party cake indeed. I brought this to work and witnessed several people going back for a second slice before they'd even had lunch (a clear sign of a good recipe!).

In the future I will definitely make this recipe again - I want to try making a chocolate version, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cake version (I'm thinking I can substitute peanut butter for one of the sticks of butter in the icing but we'll see if that works!), and a sacher-torte version. What makes this a perfect party cake? Well, besides the fact that the flavor and texture are exquisite, it looks impressive but also travels well - never underestimate the value of coconut to act as an icing buffer and protector! I know some of the other Daring Bakers have really done some creative things with this recipe, and you can check them out here.

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Categories: Cake, Coconut, Daring Bakers, Lime, Raspberry