The Cake

A while back, I wrote about Flour Bakery and their delectable sandwiches. I also mentioned in the post that  the Flour cookbook would make a great birthday or Christmas present for yours truly. Well, my dear mom (or was it Santa Clause?) came through and delivered. 300+ pages of tantalizing treats. The second I unwrapped the book, my mom and I got to work baking Flour's version of my favorite- Carrot Cake. From the cream cheese frosting to the candied carrots on top, the cake was superb. And although it looked nothing like the picture in the cookbook, we ate every crumb. A few weeks later I found myself in line at Flour during my lunch break and there staring me in the face was a Carrot Cake Cupcake- Flour style. I couldn't resist. I had to see how close we came. Other than a slight consistency difference (which I blame on high altitude cooking in Colorado) our attempt was pretty darn cook. This got my confidence up to tackle what can only be described as "The Cake"

I was a couple of weeks before Michael's 29th birthday and I finally decided to get busy on party planning. No birthday is complete without a cake, and having a boyfriend whose dream dessert is chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips didn't make my job much easier. What could I make that was the cake equivalent of chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips...? I turned to my Flour cookbook and there on page 172 was Lemon-Raspberry Cake with Lemon Buttercream. Now I know what you're thinking- this has nothing to do with chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips. But the point is, I found a non chocolate baked good that sounded right up his alley.

Well, the cake may not have called for chocolate but let me tell you what it did call for. 14 eggs. 6 sticks of butter (in the frosting alone). 10 lemons. Cracked, whipped, squeezed, and zested into homemade lemon curd, homemade buttercream (which you then mix with some lemon curd for the lemon buttercream), Light, airy cakes that require folding whipped egg white into batter- a concept that was completely new to me, and essentially a lemonade drizzle that keeps everything moist. And we cannot forget the Raspberries (which I forgot at the store and made Michael run out to get at about 8pm on a cold, rainy night. It was his cake, after all). After 5 hours of labor, I turned out this beauty:

Needless to say, there is no way I am typing up the recipe in the blog, but if anyone is interested let me know. I'll give you the money to buy the cookbook! (Yes, the recipe is that long).

Happy Birthday, Mike Mazzanti! I hope you liked you cake ;)