We had Julia's 4th birthday party this week. This is her first official party, not a family party (which we did separately) but with schoolfriends and invitations. She is a rather low-key kind of person, more comfortable in small groups, and when the guest list expanded with siblings and whatnot from five to eleven (boys and girls, ranging in age from two to six!), I was a bit apprehensive, but it all went very well -- the kids were high-spirited and enthusiastic, of course, but all in a good way. We didn't have games or even a craft -- they all had such a good time tooting the paper horns Julia had chosen and playing with the girls' toys, including the Thomas layout we'd brought into the living room, that the energy level remained high for the whole two hours.
I baked a round version of the Tea Party Cake from the Spring 2006 issue of Kids. (The Tea Party Cake is itself basically Martha's One-Bowl Chocolate Cake with strawberry and cream cheese filling and Swiss Meringue Buttercream, the cake and buttercream already a favorite chez Mommy Cooks, and the one that I made for her first birthday. I had in fact already copied out the links here before I found that the Tea Party Cake is in the database now as well.) I baked the cake the day before, and was astonished at how huge it was in this version, so tall when stacked in its three layers that the glass dome of the cake stand wouldn't fit over it. Each of the layers was about two inches thick! The smaller layer baked very quickly -- so quickly that it scorched a bit, and I actually peeled off the bottom of it before spreading the filling. The filling itself, cream cheese mixed with powdered sugar and strawberry purée, was alarmingly runny, and even without spreading to the very edge, oozed out from between the layers -- this combined with the slight scorching made me consider tossing the whole thing out and starting over again in the morning. But a night in the fridge firmed up the filling nicely, and the cake tasted wonderful in the end. It's a very easy cake, nicely chocolate (I used Ghirardelli Sweet Ground Chocolate), and wonderfully moist with the oil and buttermilk in the batter. The filling recipe makes far too much, and I might even consider cutting the recipe by a third -- but on the other hand, the leftovers are lovely on plain bagels for breakfast!
This Swiss Meringue Buttercream can seem a bit daunting, but it's actually fairly simple. You dissolve the sugar in the egg whites on the stove -- I used a big Pyrex mixing bowl over a large saucepan of simmering water -- you can hear as you whisk that the grains begin to dissolve, as that sandpapery sound gradually fades, and can test it by dipping in a finger (it gets only comfortably warm, not hot, so even the kids can help) and feeling that it's nice and smooth.
Then you beat the mixture at high speed with the whisk attachment for ten minutes or so -- it changes gradually from a funny blapping kind of sound and a kind of milky translucency --
to a beautiful snow-white creaminess. The bowl of the mixer should be completely cool by now.
Then you start adding the butter (two pounds!), pat by pat with the paddle attachment running at a lower speed. I have found that it almost always looks like it's curdling, about three-quarters of the way through, but it really does come out all right. I was a little concerned that adding a whole cup of strawberry purée would change the consistency, and so I used only half a cup, since we were expecting so many more kids and I'd been planning on serving sliced strawberries with the cake instead of ice cream (this, by the way, went over very well, and tasted wonderful with the chocolate of the cake). The frosting wasn't as pink, therefore, but it had a nice hint of berry.
It was at this point that, in my excitement over the nearly-magical transformation of glop into buttercream, I let the camera strap catch on those blasted drawer handles -- not the lovely smooth glass ones that we're trying out, but the ugly sharp-edged ones from the 1970s remodel -- and the camera fell out of my hand and onto the floor with a crash, jarring loose some kind of O-ring or gasket so that now the lens won't retract or focus. And so I have merely an underlit snap of the resulting cake -- very plainly frosted and decorated with four large strawberries.
Still, as I say, it was delicious, and I highly recommend the recipe! Very easy, very kid-friendly in the making and the eating. In fact, I think I might have just a smidge now --
