My Daughter's Birthday Cake

Over the weekend, we celebrated our second daughter's birthday (a little late but she was very gracious about it).  It's been a hectic month. 

This is a new cake recipe that I found in December in Southern Living.  It was the winner of their cake contest.  I was going to say we love white cake with good icing but we love all kinds of cakes anyway.  The cake in their pictures was beautiful and they gave all kinds of suggestions on how to decorate it for winter and other occasions as well.  They gave suggestions for laying different flavored fillings instead of just the buttercream icing.  One of the suggestions was a raspberry filling and my daughter loves raspberry so I decided to try this.  In the article, they tell you the ingredients and how to bake the cake and that is it.  As I was frosting this cake, I was thinking, I wished I had gone to culinary school because I'm sure that would have taught this trick that I had to learn by trial and error. 

In the third picture you will see that the filling is mixing in with the icing.  It wasn't supposed to do that. When you are using a different filling from the icing, do not take the filling all the way to the edge of the cake. When you put a cake layer on top to the filling that will take it to the edge.  I had to much filling so when I placed the layer of top of the filling it squished out and kept squishing out and getting into my buttercream icing.  It tasted wonderful but it didn't look wonderful! :(

The cake itself is not real sweet but the icing makes up for that.  It not real rich but I had positive feed back from all my family wanting another one.  It was just the right amount of sweetness with a creamy raspberry center.

The Recipe: Mrs. Billett's White Cake

1 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
5 egg whites
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour 3 (8 inch) round cake pans. Stir together milk and vanilla.
For best results use a heavy duty stand mixer.  Beat butter at medium speed until creamy, gradually add sugar beating until light and fluffy.  Sift together flour and baking powder; add to butter mixture alternately with milk mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture.  Beat at low speed just until blended after each addition.
Beat egg white at medium speed until stiff peaks form gently fold into batter.  Pour batter into prepared pans.  Bake at 350 for 20 to 23 minutes.  Cool in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes then remove from pans and cool on racks for about 40 minutes.  Cool completely.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing
1 cup butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 (32 oz.) package powered sugar
6 to 7 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Beat butter and salt at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.  Gradually add powdered sugar alternately with 6 tablespoons of milk beating at low speed until blended and smooth after each addition.  Stir in vanilla. If desired, beat in remaining 1 tablespoon of milk 1 teaspoon at a time until desired consistency is reached.
Spread vanilla buttercream frosting between layers about 1 cup per layer and on top and sides of cake. 

Raspberry Filling

2 cups fresh raspberries
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons of water
3 tablespoons of cornstarch
1 tablespoon of cold water
1 cup finely chopped strawberries
2 tablespoons of butter

Cook first 3 ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat stirring often until sugar has dissolved and berries are very soft.  Whisk together cornstarch and 2 tablespoon cold water until smooth(may need a little more water) add to raspberry mixture and cook stirring constantly, 1 minute.  Stir in strawberries and butter until butter is melted.  Cool to room temperature, then cover and chill for 6 hours.

So you can choose to use the raspberry filling or the buttercream between the layers.