While you never stop learning in life (and boy some of the lessons are fun, aren’t they?), you do pick up a few tips as you muddle through.
1. Play to your strengths. In other words, avoid your weak areas. Run from them. After over a year of seeing my how my interpretations stack up against a host of others’, I think we can all agree that my decorating/construction skills are lacking at best. There was the leaning tower of tiramisu cake and who can forget the saddest little jack-o-lanterns ever? Considering those masterpieces, I wasn’t about to attempt to slice a cake this thin in half. Fool me 837 times and I finally get it. We enjoyed a two-tiered cake.
As for layering frosting and jam? Yeah, right. You let me know when mangled goo looks appetizing and I’ll try the layering. Fresh blueberries all the way.
2. Know your audience. It was Patty’s birthday and Patty…LOVES whipped cream. Really loves it. This gave me the perfect excuse to skip buttercream which 1) is complicated and 2) is not my favorite. Despite the pounds I rip through baking, I don’t really love the taste of butter. But we’ll tackle that paradox another time. I tried to make a chocolate whipped cream to account for the glaring lack of chocolate in Patty’s birthday cake. I didn’t have the 4+ hours to tackle the version in the back of BFMHTY so I opted for a Maida Heatter version. It was good but decidedly not very chocolatey.
Overall, I liked this cake. I taste tested the batter (natch) and it was better than I expected. I went with lime zest because I thought it would go well with the blueberries. In the end, however, it was still white cake, which will never make my heart sing. I offered a small layer of white at our wedding for the purists but I didn’t go anywhere near it. I suppose there are occasions where this would be the perfect cake but those occasions probably call for elegant cakes. If there is one thing my cakes aren’t, it is elegant.
My “helper.” He is only in it for the sink “concoctions.”
The full recipe is at mix, mix…stir, stir by Carol.
Next week: Brownies! I don’t want to jinx it but I haven’t been disappointed by a Dorie brownie yet…
Baking with the Boys 
It was nice of you to make the cake for your friend and make it the way you knew she would like it! I love the picture of your son at the sink! Too cute.
I made the cake for a friend’s bday, too… except she wanted cream cheese frosting. 🙂 Yours looks lovely with the blueberries!
I made this for my sons birthday…and used cream cheese icing.
Here’s to lessons learned! Nice job letting your experience direct your decision making. It looks like a very successful result and I hope the birthday girl liked it. Thanks for baking with me this week and taking on a fussy cake that really isn’t your kind of thing.
Great post! Looks yummy with blueberries!
Your cakes looks delicious! Great job!
GREAT lookingn, fluffy white cake!
Love your little helper and FYI, I made the Hepburn brownies yesterday. They were divine! Just a little heads up for ya!
Love that you used whole blue berries between the layers. And the fluffy cake does look delicious.
Leaning tower of Tiramasu??? Must have missed that one…. LOL
Well it looks amazing! I personally prefer white and yellow cake over chocolate, so this was a hit for me 🙂
Looks very beautiful, and I can imagine the eyes of the guys as you were frosting this one! Nothing that doesn’t love a fresh blueberry surprise inside! I wish I had thought of real fruit as the jam was rather messy and a little too sweet…next time, I’m sticking real raspberries in there! Your cake is beautiful, and so is that last shot of your kitchen elf!
I love how billowy and fluffy your whipped cream frosting looks! Beautiful job on the cake, and I ditto your lessons learned!
YUM. I love the fresh berries. I’m doing that next time. Your cake looks wonderful.
I hear ya – white cake is just so……… not chocolate!
I hope that Patty liked her cake! Good thought on using chocolate whipped cream. I’m really not a fan of buttercream either. Two layer cake is definitely the way to go here. I agree that this is an awesome white cake. But at the end of the day, it’s a white cake. There are 20 things I’d pick ahead of it, but I do think its a good one for white cake occasions. I think your cake looks great!
Sounds delicious! I ended up wishing I’d used fresh berries and whipped cream in between the layers, so I’d say you did everything right!
Your cake looks terrific! I really love that you used fresh blueberries in between the layers. What a fun surprise when you cut into the cake!