Lemony Easter Cake

If Daring Bakers teaches me one thing about baking it will be how to follow directions! Ever since I began baking, I have not been able to follow a recipe exactly to the T. Sometimes I just don’t read it properly, and sometimes I just feel the need to improvise in some other way. The results of my recipe wandering have been mixed. Usually things turn out quite all right, and sometimes I’d say even better than the original recipe, but other times disaster ensues.

My version of Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake was dangerously close to not living up to its name, but I have to spoil the ending and say that it did actually turn out absolutely perfectly. I almost encountered the first disaster when I measured 2 ½ cups of sugar instead of 1 ½. I had already mixed my lemon zest in when I noticed my error - luckily I did notice it before I mixed the cake together. Never fear, I used my own recipe wandering technique to remedy the problem. I used the extra cup of lemon infused sugar for the buttercream! I was worried that my plan could stir up a whole new problem as I know buttercream can be tricky and I wasn’t sure what the intrusion of the lemon zest would do. What it did was make the buttercream extra lemony and delicious.

Oh, but I had to improvise more because I just couldn’t bring myself to use THREE sticks of butter for the buttercream. I actually wrote down the conversion of the recipe to scale it to two sticks since I usually do that in my head which doesn’t always lead to success. Don’t ask me how I scaled 4 egg whites by 2/3, but I did.

Like I said, the cake was delicious. I did follow the rest of the recipe and used raspberry preserves (but no coconut). My cakes were soft and moist and I loved the combination of lemon and raspberry. I will definitely keep this recipe handy for my next party.

-Bobbie Sue