Perfect Party Cake

I've been haunting the Daring Bakers for a few months now, and finally got the chance to join this March! How lucky for me that my first challenge was a cake, as I'm a big fan of layer cakes! This months challenge was hosted by Morven at Food, Art and Random Thoughts and I'm really thankful to her for choosing a Dorie Greenspan recipe because I hadn't been introduced to Dorie's baking before. I bought the great book Baking From My Home to Yours and have already made pudding and cookies from her along with this cake! 

The recipe uses egg whites only, which produces a really white cake. The cake has lemon extract and juice in the icing and batter, as well as raspberry preserves between the layers. Dorie and Morven both agree that playing around with this cake is a great idea. So since creativity was allowed, I switched it up as many of my fellow Daring Bakers did. 

Yum Yum Kiwi

I decided to use lime instead of lemon in both the icing and batter, and used fresh kiwi as the fruit between the layers. The original recipe also alludes to using fresh whipped cream instead of the meringue buttercream in between the layers so I went with a variation of that as well. 

Have fun in there pans!

I decided to make a mini cake because I didn't want to waste the ingredients on a cake that would loose its deliciousness before it could get finished. So I cut the recipe directly in half and it worked out perfectly. 

Making the meringue buttercream was definitely more involved than any other icing I have made, but it is now officially my favorite frosting. I was expecting it to be heavy, and too sweet, but I loved it and probably could have eaten a bowl full. 

Of course the day I decide to complete the challenge happened to be the day that a family friend and his wife decided to drop by my house. 'How perfect' you might think, someone to feed the lovely cake too! Well, when your family friend happens to be a French born pastry chef who specializes in cakes, the tension level rises a few notches! After I made the meringue buttercream, I gave him a taste, and much to my surprise he was very impressed! He said he was going to change his own recipe to include the lime juice because he liked it so much. What a compliment! 

So after baking the cake and slicing the cooled layers in half I began to assemble my mini masterpiece. I made some homemade whipped cream, and then folded in some yummy lime curd to go along with my lime flavoring in the cake and buttercream. The first layer got topped off with the lime whipped cream, and then the next got a layer of buttercream and lots of kiwi. Another whipped cream filled layer and then the whole cake was iced with the buttercream. 

In hindsight I wish I had put kiwi in between all the layers, and since the whipped cream and buttercream both had a lime flavor, I could have omitted the whipped cream and just used buttercream. But it still tasted delicious! 

I will definitely make this cake again, and again, and I've already thought up several other flavor combinations that I'm going to try out. 

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