TWD--Berry Surprise Cake

Our chosen recipe this week for Tuesday's With Dorie from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home To Yours was for Berry Surprise Cake and it was chosen by Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen.

The cake wasn't my favorite.  Just didn't care for the taste, it was too egg-y, BUT I am happy to say that I followed Dorie's suggestions in the recipe to a T and many complained on the TWD questions and problems board that their cakes sunk in the middle, but mine didn't really.  It did just a little bit, but otherwise was spared the crater!  PRETEND that you don't see the flour on the top of the cake.  I know that others mentioned having some unmixed flour in their cake batter, but wanting to be ever so careful folding it in to the delicate beaten eggs, I chose to not overmix and did have a bit of the flour still there.  I'm kind of bummed that the cake just didn't wow me, because the rest did.  Mostly.

I liked the cream filling with the cream cheese.  I did add a little extra sugar to it as many also mentioned it wasn't sweet enough and it definitely needed more sweet to it.  Then, I spent a little bit of an arm and bought fresh raspberries--but THAT was the best part of this.  Loved the hidden fresh berries!  I would totally do this again, but use a different cake recipe.  Also, having grown up on good ol' Cool Whip and not real whipped cream, I just don't care for the real stuff.  I know, I know--no one hate me, please.  But I did use real cream for the filling, but wasn't about to "frost" the entire cake in whipped cream. 

So I did this.

I piped some more of the filling around the top and added a few raspberries and called it good.  It was oozing with filling inside and I thought it was plenty.  Not to mention the little hidden treasures.

All in all, it was just okay.  I'm glad I made it, I really almost just skipped this week as Kevin just doesn't like cake, but I wanted to "see" if I could do it.  We had some friends over tonight and it got eaten up and everyone liked it.  I'm glad I bought the raspberries.  Thanks for picking this one, Mary Ann.  I'm sure I'd have never flipped through the book and chose it and it was fun to try a cake like this that I hadn't made before.