The Daring Bakers Do Dorie

As I recently wrote, I'm a new Dorie Greenspan cult follower, so I was pretty psyched to see that this month's Daring Bakers recipe was to be Dorie's own Perfect Party Cake. If Dorie Greenspan herself is calling something "perfect," you know it's going to be good. When Joe was here visiting a couple weeks ago, we set off on this baking adventure with great relish.

The Perfect Party Cake is a layer cake lightly scented with lemon, and between each set of layers it's got both raspberry preserves as well as buttercream frosting. More buttercream frosting finishes the outside of the cake, along with some shredded coconut for good measure.


Everything went perfectly this time around, and the flavor combination of lemon, raspberry, and coconut was truly sublime. However, I've come to realize that I simply don't care for buttercream frosting. It's just...too much. Too rich, too much butter. Nonetheless, Joe and I had a great time baking the cake, and an even better time eating it. I would definitely make this again with another, lighter kind of frosting.

To see hundreds of other takes on Dorie's Perfect Party Cake, head on over to the Daring Bakers Blog Roll. While the host doesn't appear to have the recipe on her site, many of the other Daring Bakers have posted it.

When Life Gives You Lemons...

I realize I'm about a week late on this -- shame on me! -- but I decided to go ahead and post my January Daring Bakers challenge anyway. Better late than never, right? This month the DB were assigned the challenge of a Lemon Meringue Pie, which my Mom was quite happy about because it's one of her favorites and I had planned to cook it while I was home visiting. My boyfriend Joe also did me the honor of being my talented and attentive sous-chef.


The recipe we were assigned was a bit challenging. The dough was the difficult part for me -- it didn't hold together very well, and it ended up being a bit too thick (and, in my opinion, too sweet). If I were to make lemon meringue pie again, I'd definitely use my own pie crust recipe, which always serves me well. The lemon custard part was easy, except that Joe and I got to the part where you're supposed to add the lemon juice and realized that we had forgotten to pick the lemons off the lemon tree. So I had Joe stand over the stove stirring the custard, to make sure it stayed smooth, while I sprinted out back and picked a half a dozen lemons from our tree. In the end, no harm done, and the custard was delicious with the fresh juice. The meringue itself was super easy and turned a pretty golden brown in the oven.


The recipe warned that the pie should be eaten within 6 hours, but we ignored that advice and kept it in the refrigerator for leftovers. In fact, the pie was even better (we thought) chilled the next day. (Oh, and sorry for the poor picture quality -- I took these pics in my Mom's kitchen, which has the worst lighting ever.)


To see hundreds of other takes on this Lemon Meringue Pie, head on over to the Daring Bakers Blog Roll. If you're feeling particularly daring, you can find the recipe over at this month's host's site, The Canadian Baker.