White Cream Cake

Time for another baking practice. My boss's birthday falls on Monday so I announced I'll be bringing cake & we'll celebrate discreetly among his reportees. Rounds of recipe searching (which sort of also aiming to find a more challenging one), finally ended with a birthday cake recipe: http://joyofbaking.com/WhiteCake.html.

Honestly, I chose the recipe because the final result looks pretty (from the picture in the website) & didn't go through the baking detail. It was only on Sunday that I realize the cake consist of 2 layers which needs to be baked separately & I need lemon / orange zest. Unfortunately I only have 1 round baking pan & no zester / cheese grater at all :(

But I have everything done with a little 'engineering input' (even though the preparation + baking time increase drastically to 6 hours). I JUST have to bake 2 times and use about an hour to slowly grate the orange zest :s. I started at 8+pm and finish 'dressing' the cake with white cream on 2+am. Had to get up earlier in the morning for final fruit toppings which makes the whole baking hour equivalent to 6hrs :s

I'm pretty proud of the end result, looks nice. Can't help but to snap a picture in the first place (like I always did with food, hehe). I'm glad I did that because after 10 minutes of walking carrying the cake to work, the strawberries 'shifted' position & the cake doesn't look nice anymore. Fortunately, birthday boy is very appreciative & so do my other colleauges.

Pic (top & bottom): my white cream cake, top view & side view :)

The cake received good feedback. Personally, I think it tasted good as well, wahaha...My colleagues even asked for the recipe after eating my cake (I take it as a good sign). Another colleague is 'triggerred' to bake some bread for next day breakfast. Weird but good to see the baking spirit running high in engineering department with all the guys, lol...