TWD - Perfect Party Cake

This week's Tuesday with Dorie brought back memories for me, some good, some bad, because I had made the chosen recipe once before for the Daring Bakers. The recipe was for was Dorie's Perfect Party Cake, chosen by Carol of Mix, Mix Stir.

I had some issues with my previous Perfect Party Cake, as it was the first time that I had ever cut cake into layers (or holes!) or made a meringue buttercream frosting, and the cake stuck like crazy to everything it touched. In that case, "Perfect Party Cake" was a misnomer.

Making the buttercream this time came off without a hitch and reminded me of how far I've come, although the cakes themselves were still pretty "sticky". However, I didn't want to make exactly the same cake again, so I went for minis, with cherry jam in the middle and crushed toffee on top for decoration.

I found these cakes awfully sweet, and unfortunately, I still did not like the buttercream. However, my colleagues really liked these, just as my previous colleagues liked the big "snowball" cake I made last time. This brought back plenty of ghosts for me - friendly ghosts though, of sharing the Party Cake in Melbourne, of Simon our resident photographer taking a photo of the cake, and of people being in almost religious awe of it (even though I knew that those layers of frosting hid some cake-making sins). I also posted about it while I was in New Zealand for a Split Enz concert, where I saw the thermal springs for the first time, visited the historic Treaty House, went for a "sail" on Auckland harbour, dared to go through the Hole in the Rock, and met Sonny, our hilarious Rotorua tour guide, and Martin Bosley, restauranteur extraordinaire.

Thanks to Carol for bringing back some pretty special memories for me. You can check out how the other members of TWD fared with the Perfect Party Cake by visiting the TWD blogroll.