Trying New Things

I seem to be trying new things a lot lately! I have an older widowed friend at our church who makes cakes as part of her income. I was trying on hats at her house one evening and she and my mom where chatting while she prepared some decorations for a wedding cake she was working on. She encouraged me to try my hand at making a few small simple tiered cakes and that seemed like a pretty good idea :-)

My mom and I have a favorite lemon cake recipe from Betty Crocker called a Lemonade Party Cake. You can find the recipe for it here. It is AWESOME!! Very tart... and sweet... just like me... ROFL

I have recently seen several lemon cakes with a raspberry filling and knew I wanted to give this combination a try. My mom already owns several small specialty round and square cake pans so I was able to start experimenting with this new adventure without two much out of pocket expenses: a few cake mixes, frosting containers, and a jar of jam and I was set!

The trick to stacking the cakes (and trust me when I say I tried several different ways!!!!!) is to freeze your cooled cakes and then frost the bottom layer completely first. Next, add a layer of raspberry jam to the bottom of the top tier and GENTLY place it on top of the already frosted bottom layer. Then, frost your top layer to blend the two layers together. This keeps all the jam nicely hidden and the tiers remain in their proper place without sliding all over the place!!

I will warn you that this cake was very rich. I think perhaps the next time I make it, I will use a fluffy white frosting instead of lemon, and I probably will not use the lemonade concentrate... or at least not as much. It WAS very good. But not everyone may like lemons as much as I do ;-)

-- A Victorian Cowgirl