D-2 cake baking, check!

I baked up an absolute crazy storm tonight. I started baking right when I got home from work and I'm finally done. So it comes out to be about 4 hours - not too shabby considering how many cakes I produced. I made two of 6 inch, 8 inch, 10 inch and 14 inch cakes. Because I only had one of the 10 inch and the 14 inch cake pan, and only one pan can fit in the oven at a time, I whipped up the cake batter 6 separate times!

It's a simple classic yellow cake that's buttery and rich but delicate in its texture. I am very excited about how well it will complement the silky vanilla buttercream and fresh strawberries with a bit of a crunch from the meringue layer.

I was planning on baking only a portion of the cakes tonight but somehow I got in the zone and just churned all of them out. Now that I only have the assembly left to do (transporting the cake to the venue is a whole another beast I need to deal with later), I feel a lot less pressure for tomorrow.

I got a really good tip from this cake book about using bake-even strips around the cake pan while baking for an evenly shaped cake. And today, I learned first hand that they really do work. They keep the edges of the cake from cooking faster than the center of the cake resulting in a more level cake especially for larger cakes. If you've baked cakes that had a funny bump in the middle with deep cracks, these are what you need.

Crossing my fingers that everything will go as planned for Lisa's perfect wedding day!