A Flowery First Birthday Cake

A friend asked me a few weeks ago if I would be willing to make some food and a cake for her daughter's first birthday party, and seeing it as a fun project and a chance to try some new recipes, I agreed.   She asked for a "spring-y, girly" cake, possibly with flowers, but left the rest up to me.

I started with a vanilla cake (using Smitten Kitchen's great recipe) and added a strawberry jam filling and strawberry frosting.  Deb is not kidding when she says this is the best yellow cake recipe ever.  Oh, the difference two cups of buttermilk make!  Moist and rich, with a really excellent flavor, this cake is a winner and has landed right in my file of go-to recipes.



Cakes like this are more work than you'd think. First, there's baking, trimming, cooling and freezing the layers. Then, preparing the frosting ahead of time so that it is cooled to the right consistency for spreading. I first made strawberry meringue buttercream from Martha Stewart's recipe, but despite the recipe notes saying it could be frozen, mine turned into a curdled, unsalvageable mess when I tried to whip it smooth again. Meringue buttercream has never behaved for me - I've made about 5 batches, each time hoping this will be the smooth and glorious ONE, and each time crying into my KitchenAid bowl over all the wasted butter and then throwing the whole disgusting mess away.

Which meant, despite my attempt to be prepared, I ended up scrambling to make another batch of strawberry frosting at the last minute. This time, no egg whites to make me cry. Just butter, enough powdered sugar to induce sugar-shock, and some strawberry puree for color and a lovely fresh flavor. And voila! Beautiful. I tinted a creamy white second batch to make the additional colors for decoration. I've moving on from egg whites and I'm not going back! 

So, now I had frosting. Assembling the cake takes its own sweet time too - at every stage you should pop the cake back into the fridge for half an hour or so to firm up the frosting and provide stability for what's next (and give you a chance to clean all the gobs of errant frosting off your floor, bench, and face). With three or four stages (crumb coating, filling and layering, final coating, decoration) just the assembly of the cake can take a whole evening.  



Despite the time investment, it's quite satisfying to create something like this. I've made layer cakes before, but this one stretched my decorating skills - I usually just let swirls of frosting speak for themselves.  Methinks my flower-drawing and -piping could definitely use some more practice, but overall I am quite pleased with how this cake turned out, and I hope sweet little Aimee feels the same!