Baking Friday - Cake # 7 - Happy Birthday America!!!

Happy!  Happy!  Birthday to all of us as Americans!

Yes, those are sparklers on the top of this cake.  And yes, those were lit INSIDE the office.  NO!  I DON'T recommend repeating this inside!  A friend had brought me some sparklers to light, and I was so focused on getting them lit and taking this pic before they went out that I didn't think to look up.  Oh my!  The smoke!  I just KNEW that the smoke alarms were going to go off, and everyone would have to exit the building and the Fire Department would come and I would be fired!  Thank God that didn't happen!  As my friend, S, said, "At least they smelled better than burned popcorn" after it was all said and done.  But I tell ya what, the warning on the outside of the package that sparklers are only for outdoors is not just for the lawyers!  They really mean it.

What's that you say?  Am I a natural blond?  Why yes, what makes you wonder?  (I have friends who have said for years that "God takes care of dingbats", and perhaps that could be extended to "God takes care of blonds.")

The real punchline of the joke?  We had all been sent an iskills link the night before for some training we are required to complete.  Would you like to venture a guess on the title of this training?  Oh yeah.  That's right.  Fire Prevention and Safety.

Hmmmm....

Oh!  And a Happy!  Happy!  Birthday to my friend, D, a true Yankey Doodle Darling!

Before I begin to talk about this cake, I want to say a few things about this special holiday.  I am feeling a certain renewed sense of appreciation for this country of my birth today.  G & I went to see the new movie "America" last night.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this movie but I knew that I wanted to see it.  I have friends and family who land on all ends of the political spectrum.  Patriots who tend to agree with most of the ideologies on the "right" will enjoy this movie and should see it.  Patriots who tend to agree with most of the ideologies on the "left" may not enjoy this movie, but I would encourage those to see it as well.  The creator of this movie, Dinesh D'Souza, considers the "Shame on America" narrative that has become popular in the last few decades, listing the top 5 or 6 indictments against America from various groups.  As he looks at each one, he challenges the indictment by offering other stories to consider.

As a single mother all those years, it was hard.  It.  Just.  Was.  BUT, and this is an important very big BUT, I knew that I had options available to me that I would not have had if I had been born in many other places in the world.  And for that I will always be thankful to God, and to our Founding Fathers, and to those who have served and fought and died to preserve the idea that "all men are created equal....endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."  To spend a few days each year to remind ourselves of what makes this country the intentional experiment in freedom that has been an amazingly successful experiment on the whole is a good thing.

One other thought before I move to the cake.  For the first time I ever recall hearing personally, this movie pointed out that our national anthem ends with a question:

"O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave, 

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"  

I had never noticed it as a question.  I have always sung it as a statement of fact, never appreciating that it is indeed, as penned by Francis Scott Key, a question, and one that he felt quite poignantly and without the assurance with which I have always sung those lines. I pray that the question is always sung with an implied answer - that resounding "YES!  Yes!  It does still wave!  And we are the land of the free and the home of the brave!"  

These lines may not resonate with you in the same way they do with me, such that I have tears in my eyes as I type this, but I for one am both grateful and proud to be a citizen of America.  

Now on to this cake!  This was inspired by this recipe from Driscoll's berries.  I made a few minor changes as I will show below, but this is a good cake and filling combination.  Lemons and blueberries are a pretty good marriage.  Blueberry muffins with just a touch of lemon zest are just a bit better than those made with no input from Mrs. Lemon.  I will tell you this, too, though.  The paparazzi have caught Mr. Blueberry out and about town with his mistress, Miss Peach, every now and again.  And it is hard to blame him, because they also make a very tasty pairing!  Hopefully Mrs. Lemon believes in open marriages...or, er, something like that...

I think I'm getting off track...ahem...here is a picture of the last couple of pieces...it was moist and summery and refreshing with the lemon cake and mixed berry filling and fluffy cream cheese frosting.  I think this one is a keeper!

Here is the recipe I used.  I tend to like the moistness that oil brings to a cake, plus I never keep buttermilk on hand, but I do keep buttermilk powder, so here are the ingredients that I used.

3 cups cake flour OR "pastry" flour

1 T. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

4 T. buttermilk powder

1 cup water

2 t. grated lemon zest

Dash of vanilla and lemon extract

11 T. softened butter

5 T. vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

2 egg yolks (I saved the egg whites for the frosting)

I was running very low on cake flour, so I "stretched" my cake flour into "pastry" flour by mixing in about equal parts of all-purpose flour with the cake flour and then a couple tablespoons of cornstarch.  It isn't the same thing as cake flour by any means, but it yields a flour that has less gluten than regular all-purpose flour, and it seemed to work.  So I combined 3 cups of this "pastry" flour with the baking powder, salt and the 4 T. of buttermilk powder on a sheet of waxed paper and set that aside.

Then I creamed together the butter, oil and sugar for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy.  (I used my hand mixer, because I wanted to save my big mixer for the icing, and I didn't feel like washing it out.  Yes, yes I am lazy at times...)

Then I added the eggs and the egg yolks, mixing after each one was added.  And if you've read me before, you know how much I appreciate a good peak!

I combined the water, zest and extracts together in a measuring cup and then began adding the dry with the wet alternately, beginning and ending with the dry.  And there was just a bit of stubborn vanilla bean paste stuck to the bottom of the measuring cup, so I showed it who's boss!

I wanted 3 layers instead of 2, so I baked them in three 8" layers rather than two 9" layers.

And after about 30 - 35 minutest at 350 degrees, they looked beautiful!

I just realized that I didn't mention what I did to prepare these pans.  All I did was spray the bottom of the pan with Pam, lined the bottom only with a circle of parchment paper cut to the same size as the pan, and then sprayed that.  I left the sides untouched, and see how level the cakes baked up?!  Prepping the pan this way means you have fewer or no cake scraps, so weigh your choices carefully here.  If you feel a strong need for cake scraps or the cake isn't really "done", then spray the entire pan and skip the parchment paper step.  Decisions, decisions, I tell ya...

For the filling, I had leftover blueberry filling from Baking Friday Bread # 6 Part B that I simply added some raspberries, slice strawberries and a bit of acai berry preserves to, so I didn't make the filling that Driscoll's has in their recipe.

And for the cream cheese icing, here is what I did:

2 egg whites (leftover from the 2 egg yolks in the cake)

1/8 t. cream of tartar

4 T. sugar

8oz softened cream cheese

4oz softened butter

2 T. marshmallow cream

Dash of salt

Splashes of vanilla and lemon extracts

4 cups powdered sugar

2 T. heavy cream

I beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until soft peaks and then beat in the sugar to stiff peaks.  Look at that peak!

I removed the egg whites to another bowl and then beat the remaining ingredients together until creamy before folding in the egg whites at the end.  And I was ready to assemble!

One layer down with a dam of icing and a thin layer of icing ready for the fruit filling...

I forgot to take a picture of the fruit filling on the first layer, but here is two layers down with fruit filling...

Here's a close up of just the filling...looks yummy I think!

And then I added the 3rd layer and frosted the whole thing and piped a border around the top.  Now for the star of blueberries!  I have always struggled to get the angles right on stars, so I cheated.  Er, I mean that I was smart and used a cookie cutter!

Berries for the points...

And then berries for the outline...

And then berries in the center!

Driscoll's did only berries at the bottom, but I did an icing border and berries - and I'm sorta glad that I did, because one taste tester who is being very good with what he eats these days was able to enjoy about a 4" - 6" bead of berries and icing on the cake plate with one swipe of his fork!

Since raspberries didn't look so good in the store I was at, I used strawberries instead for our red.

And voila!  It was Independence Day!  Especially once I added the fireworks...which, kids, don't try this at home...not a good idea.  Unless you WANT to push the smoke alarm limits, in which case...

Happy 4th of July everyone!  Celebrate all that is good and free about this country of ours!  Celebrate the right to Life, and the right to Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, for not everyone in history has been free to do so like we have been.  

Thanks for stopping by! 

Love,

D