A Little Bit of All Right

I was really looking forward to this month's Cake Slice Bakers' bake from The Perfect Cake .  It was one of the cakes I knew I had to bake as soon as I saw it.  A lemon layer cake filled and frosted with a beautiful blackberry mascarpone frosting.  I could see my family oohing over the look and aahing over the taste.  Unfortunately, I was not able to produce the cake of my vision.  Fortunately, I don't think any of the issues I had were a direct result of the recipe. The first issue I had was a reading issue.  Despite pre-reading the recipe and then re-reading as I baked, I missed a crucial sentence that caused me to misinterpret the rest of the recipe resulting in a cake that was so dense it didn't even cook completely through.  The second issue was with the frosting.  It was not stiff enough to hold the layers together.  I'm not exactly sure what caused this issue, but I think it might have been that my jelly did not set up enough.  The frosting recipe calls for