Birthday Cake

Sunday was my husband’s birthday, so I made him a cake. There is nothing quite like a made from scratch cake to show your love. We had talked about it earlier in the year and to my surprise he said he wanted a chocolate peanut butter cake (he is not a big peanut butter fan). So I trolled the internet for the perfect recipe, and lo and behold I found it! I compiled my ingredients and began baking.

While the cake layers were baking and cooling I made the peanut butter whipped filling and the chocolate ganache.

I trimmed the cake layers…

Then began assembly.

The last step was lettering. I practiced a bit before trying it on the real thing. The key is to go slowly and to follow through on every stroke.

The cake turned out so well! I even had 2 people tell me that they didn’t normally like peanut butter, but they liked my cake!!

The recipe took me the majority of a day to make, once you count baking and cooling and chilling times, and the time was well worth it! I made the cake pretty much as instructed. The only change I made was to add about 1/4 cup less sugar than called for.

Would I make this cake again? Definitely! Should you make this cake? Absolutely!!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yesterday was my birthday. I love birthdays because they are the one day a year that is really just about me (wow, that sounds really narcissistic…). And I don’t work on my birthday. I’ll work on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, but not on my birthday. And let me tell you, this year my birthday was amazing!! My husband went above and beyond to make it so.

We started by going to breakfast, then I went to get a pedicure with a friend. Apparently this is the time when my husband dreamed up a dastardly birthday plan. I had planned to have a very low-key day, so when I arrived home I pulled out my knitting and turned on my favourite Netflix show. My husband had gone out on an unnamed errand and returned with a gift – well, multiple gifts, actually. He brought me a tiny bread tin, a cooling rack, and two baking mixes! Yum! I set to work immediately to make us some tiny Pumpkin bread!

baking

A little later he presented me with another gift: A tiny Doctor to go with the Tiny TARDIS on my desk.

doctor

And so the day went on. Every time I least expected it he would turn up with another present. This man knows me well: he gave me something from all my favourite fandoms. I love baking. I love Doctor Who. From Harry Potter he gave me The Tales of Beedle the Bard. For knitting he gave me Knits for Pets (I need to make some cat toys now). For music he gave me a CD of the Three Tenors Christmas. He made me a steak dinner. And he gave me tea.

tea

I think this was the best birthday I’ve ever had. And it’s not (just) because of the presents. It’s because I spent the day with the person I love most.

cake