un petit gateau

Over the weekend Buddy Budderson - ever the attentive boyfriend to the delightful Sammy - decided to bake her a birthday cake from scratch.  Of course, he called Saucy for some help.  Help only, as he was adamant to do the work himself.  And he did.  He even cleaned up the kitchen.

Saucy pulled out her Miette cookbook because immediately the petite gateau pictured on its cover came to her mind.  It is charming and sweet... and utterly doable for the most inexperienced of cake decorators.  At the very least, the finished product would look somewhat like the original and Buddy would not suffer too much frustration with his first turn at a piping bag.

The recipe was quite good and Saucy was glad she visited the website before proceeding to far as the book went to print with some mistakes and she was able to make the necessary corrections to the text before using any of the recipes.

On a cute note, Buddy was amazed at how much work went into baking a cake completely from scratch and had no idea there was so much precise measuring involved and that even the temperature of the ingredients was critical to success!  Boys.  Saucy taught him to cook, but not as much baking as Loopy has done.

The recipe makes two six-inch cakes for slicing and decorating.  Not having two six-inch pans, Saucy baked the second half of the batter in a seven-inch pan and decorated it with the leftover swiss meringue buttercream from the book (one of the best recipes Saucy has used).

Saucy's leftover version may be a bit more finished because of her experience, but Buddy's?  It was the perfect little token of affection for someone special.  Plus, the three layer version is cuter.

His is much, much better, don't you think?