A chocolate & strawberry cake for my roommate's birthday party, along with a handful of mocha cupcakes and some guac & salsa for snacking!
This cake marks the first time I have successfully made swiss meringue buttercream! Every time I tried I would get excited about my fluffy, shiny meringue and then watch in horror as it began to separate as I added butter, and then give up in frustration and toss my soupy, lumpy frosting in the trash. Turns out I just needed to keep whipping - it gradually gets even lumpier, and then suddenly thickens up and turns into a beautifully smooth buttercream. The instructions on this page are extremely helpful! It was still a lot of work to manage the buttercream after it was made, however, because the intense summer heat causes the buttercream to separate every time you move it from the fridge to the counter. I ended up re-whipping the buttercream to room temperature and then frosting the cake in my bedroom right in front on the air conditioner.
The big cake is three layers of Ina Garten's awesome chocolate cake with strawberry swiss meringue buttercream and some strawberry jam (frozen strawberries + sugar + a little gelatin cooked until thick) in between the layers. I am not good at frosting things all smooth and pretty so I went for a kind of punk rock look with red streaks in the frosting and chocolate-dipped/spattered strawberries on the sides and top.
The cupcakes are the same chocolate cake with mocha buttercream, which I made by melting together some chocolate chips, cream, and expresso powder, then cooling and whipping into the buttercream.
Some fresh guac made from monsterously large avocados, and some Green Mountain Gringo salsa enhanced with a fresh CSA tomato and some minced onion and jalapeno.
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