Daring Baking! Perfect Party Cake

How exciting, I got to try another recipe from the wonderful 'Baking-from my home to yours' by Dorie Greenspan. Every recipe I've made from this book has turned out just beautifully, I think she shares my taste, not to mention meticulously tests the recipes. I loved the ginger chocolate cake, the oatmeal breakfast bread, and this recipe is just delicious! I have to say, I'm not big on cake, especially white or yellow types of cakes, and this was so yummy, moist and wonderful I'll be making it at every opportunity!

I decided to follow the recipe exactly first. I had a birthday to bake for and this was the perfect opportunity. I made the delicious lemon cake, and the lemon buttercream and used a lingonberry jam from IKEA. I'm glad I used a really tart jam, as I found the buttercream extremely sweet to my taste. The cake is just the most wonderful I've ever tasted. Its not too spongy, not too dense and wonderfully creamy and light with the buttercream.

The second time I tried a bit of a twist on the original recipe. I made an orange cake, subbing orange zest for lemon, and adding orange essence. I used the blood orange marmalade instead of jam, then substituted chocolate ganache for some of the butter in the buttercream. I decorated with chocolate shavings and orange segments.

I took this second version to bookclub and most of it disappeared very quickly, everyone kept going back for more. It was delicious with the orange and chocolate combination!

The buttercream caused me a bit of a headache as it curdled a little, and never seemed to come together. I found that this didn't really seem to matter when I put it on the cake, it wasn't visibly separated, but I think I should have made ganache with the butter instead of cream as that was just too much water. Tastewise I much preferred it, the bittersweet chocolate toned down the sweetness.

Its a long recipe, so I'll link to one of the other daring bakers, Rosa if you'd like to see a really beautiful version! Or buy Dorie's book, its jolly good.