TWD: The Perfect Party Cake

Ta-da. My first recipe with Tuesdays with Dorie. I will be posting about a recipe from Baking: From My Home to Yours twice a month with several other baking enthusiasts who also have blogs. It's a nifty idea, and I'm happy to be baking something new and different this often. This week's recipe, Perfect Party Cake was chosen by Carol from mix, mix...stir, stir.

Finally, it was a sunny weekend in Brooklyn. David and I spent it at a pub crawl in Carroll Gardens, doing laundry (joy), and buying delicious food. We bought some homemade pickles and thai-flavored cashews while we waited for our clothes to shrink...I mean, dry. I was just getting ready to make the Perfect Party Cake when I realized my other 9x2 inch cake pan was missing. Sigh. It's been missing since Anne Marie and I made Valentine's brownies in it....over two years ago. Apparently, it's been that long since I made a cake. Welcome back to cake-baking, Jana. Why, thank you.

I have a fear of egg whites. It all goes back to the time I made Mark Bittman's recipe from How to Cook Everything for pancakes that called for egg whites, and instead of them turning out super fluffy, they were super flat.

Don't mess with a girl's breakfast. (not Bittman's fault, my own)

Anyway, I may have overcome my fear of egg whites (I'm at least on the road to recovery). This recipe called for me to use a double boiler to melt sugar and egg whites to create a meringue and after some agonizing whisking (David had to relieve me at some point), I had created a solid. woo woo.

I have no idea how David and I are going to eat all of this cake, but I'm sure we will manage somehow. Off to Oregon to see David's family this weekend...