Cake

This was my birthday cake! At some point in time I got it into my head that this year I would bake a birthday cake from scratch. It may have started long ago when I saw a 6 page spread in Real Simple all about cakes. Cake, cake frosting, cake toppings, cake filling, you name it- it all looked amazing. We started dreaming up the perfect birthday cake and before almost settling on a german chocolate cake (my favorite) we found this beauty and decided to go crazy. To view the website and the recipe click here.

This is a picture of the cake we were copying.

We decided that we liked the way this cake looked but that it wasn't chocolatey enough (or well, in any way at all). So we decided to go with a chocolate orange theme (you know like the yummy chocolate oranges you break open at Christmas time?) We made a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting in the middle and then orange citrus frosting on the outside. I'll tell you right now, yes it is as rich as it sounds. So rich that I don't think we will make it again but all in all it was a fun time. I had some difficulties with the cake due to not buttering the pan enough and having it stick a little bit. This resulted in, ummmmm, well... like 6 "layers" of cake rather than 2. I very creatively had to "paste" the pieces back together with chocolate frosting. This is why the cake is not perfectly round and sort of blob-ish looking. The orange citrus recipe we took straight from that website and it had way too much butter. I know that cake has a lot of butter, and frosting does too, but this was just too much. Too rich, it practically tasted like butter. So anyway, all in all it tasted good but not amazing. Next time, German chocolate it is! :)

We enjoyed the cake with a couple of friends last night! A good time was had by all. Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes, cards, phone calls, and text messages. I had a great birthday! I will be spending my first week of being 24 with one of my best friends Ashley Whipple. We have been busy and I can't wait to share all of our pictures and stories with you. More again soon! Have a great 4th of July on Monday everyone!