patty cake

A. turns 3 next week, while Dave and I are out of town. We're having an early mini-party tomorrow to celebrate. The special occasion inspired me to bake a cake! It's been a long time since I attempted a cake – and it showed. I tried to make my mom's sponge biscuit cake recipe, which is designed to be easily scaled up or down. The problem is that I scaled down the eggs, but forgot to change the proportions of the rest of the ingredients! Oops. I only realized this when the cake was halfway done baking, so I anxiously hovered over the oven...and it turned out fine. I clearly have no idea when precision is of the utmost importance and when a recipe is pretty flexible. Aren't people always talking about how everything has to be so precise with baked goods? Confused.

At any rate, baking is still an astounding thing. I can't believe that we start off with this:

And end up with this! Even when you get the recipe all wrong!

 
 The "frosting" is just whipped cream with lemon zest:

I filled the inside with strawberries:

Popped the top back on:

And decorated with raspberries:

I initially thought of doing a capital A, but the effect was a little too Scarlet Letter. I hope she likes it!