Cake trial #1

I can already tell this is going to be a trial and error process. Even when I find the right recipe, it will take some tweaking to get right. I got the recipe for this Tiramisu Wedding Cake with Berries from http://www.epicurious.com/. The cake layers were a basic butter cake with almond extract. The batter had a lot of egg whites in it so the first two layers got a little crispy on the top. By the third layer, I figured out that if I made a tent out of foil, it would keep it from over baking. The frosting and soaking syrup were relatively easy to make. I changed the frosting to one that I found from http://www.joyofbaking.com/ that was used on a red velvet cake. It had cream cheese as well as marscapone (which is in typical tiramisu). The marscapone cut out the sweetness a little which was nice. I would have even liked it even ess sweet than it turned out. I covered each layer of the soaking syrup (a mixture of coffee, water, and Kaluha), frosting, and sliced strawberries. Once I frosted the whole cake (three layers high), I covered the top with more sliced strawberries and put a border of fresh mint and blackberries on the bottom. After all that work, I went to put the top on my cake carrier and the dang cake was too high! I had to mush it down so the top would lock since I was taking it to my Aunt Paula's the next day. The picture above is obviously not the one I made but I couldn't leave this post blank.

Verdict: This recipe will stay in the running. I would need to sweeten the soaking syrup a bit because it was a little bitter, thicken the frosting with more cream cheese and less powdered sugar, and use a little more vanilla in the cake batter. I did have another idea today. I thought about a vanilla cake with cinnamon based soaking syrup and layer it with rhubarb. I've never heard of anyone doing a rhubarb wedding cake so it would be something totally different!

UPDATE: Thanks to my cousin, Ashley, this is what my first trial run looked like. It got a little smushed in the cake carrier. A lot of the recipe reviews said it even better by the third day, but I beg to differ. The soaking syrup was still really bitter and the cake got a weird taste. I decided I didn't like this recipe at all. Yuck.