Christmas Party Cake Buffet December 2013

This year my coworker and I were in charge of the Christmas party at work. To help us stick within our budget (and because I kind of wanted to see if I could do it), I volunteered to do a cake buffet for dessert. I did seven cakes/cheesecakes, six of which I actually served at the party. This whole experience definitely had its ups and downs! I planned to do two cheesecakes, a flourless chocolate torte, a bundt, and three layer cakes. I did the cheesecakes and torte two nights in advance and the others the night before, since I didn't think I could realistically get them all done in one night.

The first night I had all kinds of trouble. First, my brownie swirl cheesecake did not get cooked through. I still don't know exactly what went wrong. I've made this recipe before and it turned out fine. In the end, I ended up cooking the cheesecake an extra 20-30 minutes longer than the recipe called for and by the time it was cooked in the middle, the edges were a little on the overcooked side. Since I knew I would have more cake than we really needed, I decided in the end not to serve this one at the party. But when I actually ate it later in the week, I realized it didn't really taste as overcooked as thought it would and I probably could have served it. No pictures of that one.

The next disaster was my torte. I decided to use a water bath in the hopes of keeping the torte flat at the edges, since the tortes I've made in the past have always been much higher on the edges than the middle and haven't looked very attractive. Unfortunately, I did not do enough to keep the water from seeping in through the seam in the spring form pan, and my torte got water in it. Spongy and soggy and disgusting! So rather than risk water damage again, I mixed up a new torte and baked it without the water bath. As expected, the edges looked dreadful, but at least it was edible. Luckily my third project of the night---my pumpkin cheesecake---came out beautifully.

On night two I baked and decorated the remaining four cakes. I tried to make strawberry and cream filling thickened with gelatin for my white cake, but it never set up. It was just a liquid mess. I have no idea what I did wrong, but I'm not very keen to work with gelatin again any time soon. In an attempt to salvage some of the lovely fresh strawberries I had used up on what was essentially strawberry soup, I mixed up some butter cream and stirred some of the failed filling into it to make it strawberry flavored. After that, the cake didn't turn out half bad. Luckily that was my only failure of the night and I was able to finish the other three cakes (red cake, velvet chocolate bundt, and applesauce cake) without incident.

The day of the party dawned and I enlisted the help of a number of coworkers to help me transport the cakes from my house. Despite my various difficulties, I think all the cakes ended up looking pretty good except for the torte. Luckily, what the torte lacked in aesthetic appeal it made up for in taste---it was the first cake to go and I even had someone request the recipe later. On the whole, I was pleased with the result and everyone at the party seemed to like my cakes.