key lime cake for happy birthdays

First of all, this is not a food blog. It may be hard to tell what with all of the food posts lately, but it is not. So. Now that we have that cleared up, let me share with you a delicious little treat I baked up for the mister's birthday over the weekend.

It is the Key Lime Cream Cake by the lovely Bakerella, and it is just delightful. No crazy ingredients needed to make this baby from scratch (coming from a person who considers cake flour a crazy ingredient, ok? Normal, plain old, all-purpose flour here.) I didn't have access to key limes, and regular limes did just fine. I won't repost the recipe here out of respect for the original author, but if you have any trouble accessing the recipe please let me know. 

 Also, I made two round cakes and did not slice them into additional layers. It just seemed unnecessary to me, so I skipped that step. Plus it just seems like an excuse to add more frosting and I'm not really into a whole lot of frosting. That being said, I also cut the frosting recipe in half and it was still more than enough for me. Really, I cannot imagine eating this cake with more than twice the frosting. Uhhh no. But the fresh whipped cream and graham crackers? Completely necessary. This made all the difference so I would not recommend skipping out on these. And don't just get Cool Whip. I mean, you can, but you won't be doing yourself any favors there.

Now I will admit that I am not the world's best cake decorator. I like to tell myself that messy is charming and nice, but let's be honest this makes me a little jealous.

That, folks, is a gosh darned gorgeous cake. Mine looked nothing like that. I piped my whipped cream on with a zip-lock back and ended up with a giant blob in the middle of the cake. And I have no clue how you make that happen with graham cracker crumbs on the side of the cake. No clue. Try as I might it all pretty much ended up on the tray around the cake, and what did stick to the cake messed up the frosting. But you know what? I don't think the mister minded. I don't think he minded one bit.

my night in photos

Yes, I could have already seen Mates of State weeks ago here in DC. But. They just happened to be playing on a Wednesday night and the mister has class on Wednesday nights. When I first realized this, I was kind of devastated. I don't even know how many times I have seen Mates of State at this point, but suffice it to say it will never be enough. But it was not to be. 

Until.

I heard that they would also be playing Baltimore. Just a little while later. On my birthday.

So, yeah, I could wait.

 

I think it was pretty much meant to be. The Ottobar is a cute little venue, with an odd little balcony that puts you just at top left of the band. You could probably reach through the beams and touch Kori's head (if that weren't a totally creepy thing to do). And for some reason I thought I had read an article that indicated they would be playing almost exclusively new material at the shows, but was so absolutely thrilled to find out that was not the case! Not that I don't love the new stuff, but they played so many of my favorites that I was totally not expecting to hear. I kept thinking well I'm sure they're not going to play this one. And then they did. 

Fluke

 At Least I Have You

For the Actor

Goods

True Love Will Find You in the End

And then some. I was also surprised at how many songs they played from Re-Arrange Us, given that it was largely disliked by critics. I liked it, but I'm a little bit biased. And I'm still waiting to see Mags on stage. That's what people are really there for, right? No? Just me? Ok.

Oh and whatever you do, don't forget to enter my giveaway! There's still time!

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A Birthday Weekend in photos

We started the day with a little home made breakfast. Ricotta pancakes w/ fruit, recipe from Baking Bites via CakeSpy. I was a little nervous about this recipe as there are some things I've managed to go years without learning how to do. Like separate eggs. To me that was in the same category as cracking an egg open with one hand in Things I Will Never Do. But I did it. And beat egg whites into soft peaks. I did it all. I did it so the mister could have a wonderful birthday breakfast.

There were balloons, there was pizza, there was cake. Apparently I forgot to buy the birthday hats, but there's always next time.

The cake was a raspberry lemonade poke cake that I modified slightly from Betty Crocker. The basics are the same; start with a white box cake, add lemonade concentrate, poke the cake and pour raspberry jello mixture on top, and I feel the need to mention that this recipe also required separating eggs. Figures. I just left out the part where they put the jello mix in the actual cake batter before baking, because 1) I wanted to separate the flavors a little bit more, and 2) I didn't think Chris wanted a solid pink cake. I don't know if this had any real impact on the outcome of the cake or maybe I didn't mix the batter enough, but the cake came out very dense. Tasty, but not the consistency I look for in a cake. Maybe I'll give it another try some other time. Oh, I also added some little yellow sprinkles on top with the raspberries as a nod to the raspberry-lemonade theme.

Here's how the kids spent their weekend.

Lazy, as always.

Anyway, I do hope the mister enjoyed his first birthday as a married man. I'm not sure what difference that makes, but it seemed like it should, so I tried to make it a good one. :)