Obviously the expletive not deleted...
It was graduation and Mother's day this weekend ( I live and work in a major college town), so I worked basically from 6AM to 1 AM every day for the last 5 days. In the flurry of making dessert for 800 and 6 specialty cakes, I asked my high-school senior neighbor, who is assisting me to earn money for prom, to mix up a batch of my white buttermilk cake. She's a straight A student, so I figured she could follow a recipe. We baked the suckers up, and holey-moley!!! 
They are the best cake ever. ( I would like to say the best white cake I ever made, but I didn't make it) It is both richer and fluffier than my buttermilk cake, which is pretty darn good cake.
So I called her last night to find out what she did differently than the recipe, but she has no idea. 
She says she followed the directions exactly.
Now, I am left with only memories of the perfect white cake and no way to recreate it. SO FRUSTRATING!!! 
I'm so sorry. Did you have any different ingredients this time that she used? A different brand?
That might be exactly it - she did it EXACTLY as written - I'll bet you've been doing it so long and so well you short-cut stuff without even realizing it (I know I do). Maybe she is beating it exactly the number of minutes in the recipe using a less powerful mixer than you do? Or could be she was using brnad new ingredients? maybe yourbaking soda is old, for example?
This is offtrack, but txcat- Your vanilla cognac cake (with the Navan) is divine. Thanks for sharing the recipe!
That might be exactly it - she did it EXACTLY as written - I'll bet you've been doing it so long and so well you short-cut stuff without even realizing it (I know I do). Maybe she is beating it exactly the number of minutes in the recipe using a less powerful mixer than you do? Or could be she was using brnad new ingredients? maybe yourbaking soda is old, for example?
That is an excellent point. She is taking AP chemistry and probably does things like measure precisely, where I have been baking so long I "EYEBALL" things much more often than I should.
Snowboarder- Glad you liked the cognac cake. It is a particular favorite.
And, as my husband always says, good food tastes even better if you're not the one cooking (in this case, baking) it.
Oh no!! LOL.. that stinks.. maybe the PP is right though.. maybe she just did it exactly as it was typed? Hopefully you can figure it out together.. have her coem over and mix one up and see what she does and if it turns out the same.
This is a disaster of a whole new level.. LOL.
And to add on to the tangent.. the vanilla cognac cake really IS to die for. 
have you ever shared the buttermilk cake recipe? I'd love to try it if you have.
Is your vanilla cognac cake in the recipe section? I'd love to try it!
Jacqui
Thank you! I do use the double chocolate cake and that is sooo yummy!
Jacqui
well it sounds to me you have a perfectionist on your hands and you need to go to her house ( or whose every house she mixed it at) and watch her step by step and see how she did it...
Yep, I think you need to ask her to make it again and see if it comes out the same. I tried 20 times to put a UPS tracking number in the proper field awhile back and everytime I came up with a bad command. My husband came home and tried it once and got it the first time and the most frustrating thing was I knew I was reading each character and number exactly correct. Have her over to bake cake again 
p.s. as I was writing this my cake helper (my new puppy) took the parchment paper off the table and ran around the house with me running after her. She loves a chase. ** Trying to catch my breath **
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