Viennese Strawberry Cream Cake

Sam's b-day was 3 weeks ago and we just now rounded up the family to get together. Poor kid!

Party planning and organization are really not a strength for me...the kids are lucky if I can pull it all together---cake, people over, food, and gifts---it's overwhelming. Can't we just put a candle in a bowl of ice cream, sing and call it a great day? Just kidding, I do love to make them happy; just stressful for me.

This time was even more frantic, because Sam would not decide on a cake until that day. He was going to go with the old standby "Grandma Muenks' Chocolate Sheet Cake" because he felt sorry for me that I might not have time to create something else. BUT, I knew that he had been analyzing my new 2-inch thick Cake Cookbook, the glossy prints making him drool and dream of sweet treats. He literally sat in the kitchen for an hour, flipping through the pages, reading the ingredients and imagining beautiful cakes, chatting about them as he went---kind of strange, but warmed my heart. How, then, could I settle for chocolate sheet cake?!

So, with 3 hours until guests arrived, I purchased all of the ingredients to prepare the "Viennese Strawberry Cream Cake." The picture looked beautiful and the ingredient list was long (including 2 tablespoons of kirsch, which set me back $12 a bottle for those 2 T.!). Several steps later, I had the sponge cake in the oven and was beginning to puree strawberries for the syrup. It was going well...or so I thought!

My mom arrived just in time to help make the kirsch syrup, which was to soak up in the cake. After a few minutes she heard me wailing that the cake "just doesn't look right." My mom is quite the experienced cook/baker and announced that "no" it didn't look right at all. Instead of a puffy spongecake, I had crepes in the oven!

After I practically threw the pans across the room, my mom jumped into high gear. She knew just what went wrong---too little whipping of the batter and not quite right sequence of steps. Hmmm, "don't over beat" and "don't under beat" which is it?! I was trying to be kind to the eggs and not create a tough cake :)

So, leave it to my mom; she had a new spongecake whipped up in no time, prepared the syrups/gelatin mixtures and arranged the thing. A Mom who can save the day, while the guests are arriving, without batting an eye, is wonderful indeed---I am blessed!

And, so is her grandson...no crepes for his birthday cake. Her creation was delicious!

Above pics...Sam got a new guitar with instructional DVD. He is actually quite good..after a few hours, I could start to hear some strumming that sounded a bit like a song ?!