Monday, June 9, 2008

Strawberry Bicycle Cake!

My team did Americas Most Beautiful Bike Ride on June 1st, and had a truly wonderful time. When the team made it back to San Diego, we had a big party to celebrate our achievements. It was a little different for everyone, for me it was my first century where I felt really happy and not too achy after, for many it was their first ever century and everyone finished strong, and we were the last to leave the dance floor at the party after! We even made it to the scariest bar in Tahoe, Cabo Wabo!!

I decided to make the dessert, and what better dessert to make than Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake. Its a wonderfully light lemony cake, and I knew it was strong enough to make shapes with. I'm not a big fan of the buttercream, I hardly ended up using any of it! Between the layers I put lemon curd and strawberries, I think I would have added a smear of buttercream just to give it a bit more of a rich flavor, it was a little dry. I had leftover strawberry buttercream from another project, as I was worried about too much of the bland buttercream. It was really delicious, and although it looked a little curdled while I made it, it actually spread on nice. I used twizzlers for the decorating, buttercream on the sides, then placed strawberries on the outside. Not quite professional, but quite impressive for my first shape cake effort! And it went down well, I made a double recipe and the entire cake was gone by the time I left!

Recipes:
Perfect Party Cake is beautifully blogged about by Rosa, I wont repeat the recipe here!
Strawberry buttercream from martha stewart/sprinkles
Lemon Curd from Rose Levain's cake bible

2 comments:

Dolores said...

Congratulations on a successful century; what a wonderful application for Dorie's party cake.

Also wanted to let you know I tagged you for a meme on my blog. No pressure if you'd rather not participate, but I'd love to see your answers if you're game.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on doing a century. I am a cyclist too from the Palm Springs area. Have never done a century. My husband and I ride in Oceanside sometimes when we can get out of the desert. Nice bicycle cake sounded tasty too!