I highly recommend it

Because I waited until the last minute, I didn't make the buttercream. Although substituting this with whipped cream was allowed, I still felt cheater-y. Don't take away my badge please!

I read and re-read the recipe, but I knew something was going terribly wrong as my runny batter listlessly pooled at the bottom of my cake tins. As feared, the cakes came out flat and dense (and not the good kind of dense you get from a flourless chocolate cake but the bad kind of dense you get from an old rubber tire)...not light and sponge-y as I dreamed they would. They were so thin I couldn't even split the layers (unless I wanted to end up with a crepe cake). So I ended up with a 2-layer cake instead of a 4-layer one.

And we all know that Dorie's recipes are fabulous! And pretty much all the Daring Bakers turned out beautiful cakes (see them here!). So guess who futzed out on her watch? You got it.

Sigh...so I did what I often do when life's inevitable problems appear. I covered it up in sweetened whipped cream (tinted a light pink with mashed strawberries)! Have you ever tried covering your problems/too-tight jeans/mountain of laundry/irritating politicians in pink, sweetened whipped cream? I highly recommend it!

Don't think I have given up on the dream of a layer cake though. I fully intend to make a successful one no matter how many layer cakes get harmed in the process. Because really, when it comes to baking, what I think matters most in the final tally, is not how many disasters you endured, nor how many triumphs you enjoyed, but the fact that you dared to do it at all :)