Book Club Cake

This month was my turn to host Book Club. Which means another opportunity to make a fun cake!
This time I made the cake and frosting from scratch, using recipes from my Cake Boss book Paul and Jenna got me for Mother's Day! I made Italian Buttercream, which I learned is quite different than regular buttercream. I now know how to get sugar to its softball stage... but since I couldn't find my kitchen thermometer, I'm not positive that I did it completely right. The texture turned out... wierd. In case you can't tell, I tried to make it look like pages of a book.Oh well, it tasted good!

It's kinda plain, but I was on a time crunch!

 
We read East by Edith Pattou. It's a young adult book; a retelling of East of the Sun and West of the Moon (very Beauty and the Beast -ish). It's a very cute story, and was fun to read. However, It wasn't as thought provoking as the books we normally read (it was a last minute substitution).
But, let's be honest, it was a great excuse to get together and just have fun!