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.

Photo A Day

day #15 happiness

day #16 morning

day #17 water

day #18 something I bought

day #19 sweet

day #20 someone I love

 day #21 reflection

I have been having a little bit of a hard time keeping up with the photo a day, and not always getting them in quite on time, but I'm not giving up! I am determined to see this thing through! I am currently caught up, so let's see if I can keep it going for the remainder of the month.

Photo a Day

day #8 sky

day #9 daily routine

day #10 childhood

day #11 where I sleep

day #12 close-up

day #13 in my bag

 

day #14 something I'm reading

Read a little more about what the heck this Photo a Day thing is anyway, right over here.

And by the way, I have finished reading The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton. It only took a couple of weeks, which may not be fast by anyone's standards but my own. But in my defense it was a pretty big book and I don't have a whole lot of free time. But boy when I did I devoured that thing. There is some disturbing content and it's not an altogether happy story, but quite amazing, fascinating, and true. So do what you will with that information.

#photoaday

So I have decided to participate in a little thing called the January Photo a Day Challenge. There is a list of topics and you take a photo every day to go with each topic. The list is as follows.

I picked up on this challenge a little late, so I started on Day 4.

letterbox

something I wore

makes me smile (full disclosure I took this photo the day before, but I didn't think I needed to take another one)

favorite

 

I will be back again next week with a roundup of this week's photos. Have instagram and want to join in the fun? Just start uploading your photos on the given day and tag it with #photoaday and #day(number). Not following me on instagram yet? My name is dropandanchor, so look me up and drop me a line!

it's beginning to look a lot like...

 

New garland I made from pages of an old encyclopedia (they do have a use after all!). Gingerbread shakes, gingerbread lattes, cranberry bliss bars, oh my. Decorating the tree, undecorating the tree, bowl full of balls. The nutcracker gang. Foggy winter mornings. Sugar cookies in my beloved KitchenAid.

It's beginning to look a little bit like Christmas around here. Now if only I could put presents under the tree without the puppy eating them all.

photodump!

Halloween decorations. Mini-pumpkins, big ones yet to come. Movie night with the hubs. Home-made cream cheese stuffed french toast. Food is always better (at least visually speaking) on checkered paper. My first cuckoo clock (yes, I said first with intent to buy more). My beautiful Rifle Paper Co recipe box! (Thanks so much siblings for the wonderful wedding gift!) Kitty having a lazy day off with me. The inexplicable Beatlerama.

long weekend

This weekend did not turn out as planned, but it did turn out to be quite spectacular. 

The original plan was to spend a long weekend in a cabin in the middle of the mountains, hosted by one of my best friends on the planet. When a family emergency prompted her to cancel the trip I was a little heartbroken (and concerned for her and her family of course), but the mister and I decided not to just sit around at the house and instead take full advantage of each day that we had off together. It so rarely happens, after all. 

To kick off the weekend, I had an unexpected Friday night off and the mister already had plans to see a movie with a friend so I decided to plan a girls night out! I don't even know the last time this happened. Yummy dinner, a little shopping, and a movie (The Help, actually quite cute) was such a treat and I'm glad we could make a night of it!

On Saturday we decided to head over to Great Falls, since I'm fairly certain I had never been there even having lived here for so long. I have to admit I was expecting something a little...greater. It was pretty and all, but it reminded me more of hiking alongside the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg than anything I would call Great Falls. To be fair there is some water spilling over some rocks. I guess you could call that Falls. I don't know. I generally think there should be a significant falling of water over several stories to constitute a Falls, but that could just be me. It was lovely nonetheless.

On Sunday we picked up a few odds and ends at Ikea, got some Orange Julius at the mall, got caught in a downpour, and did some relaxing. 

Monday was the big day. The one we had planned out. Monday we headed down to VA Beach. We headed out pretty early in the morning and got there before noon, and from the looks of things when we got there we were in for a relatively chilly, windy, overcast day.

Not exactly what you dream of for a day at the beach, but hey, I was prepared to take it. I was just happy to be at the beach. And the wind made for good kite flying (this was not planned, I just happened to still have the kite in my car from the last time we used it a couple of years ago) And then this happened.

It turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day at the beach. The clouds went along their merry way and left the sky bright blue. It warmed up, sent us in the water, and made for a lovely day. Until we realized I was getting burned. I had applied sunscreen, several times, because I know myself. But it was no match for the fury of the sun. And today I can barely walk it hurts so bad. I'm carrying my aloe lotion around with me like a baby with her bottle. Do I regret it? No. Am I going to trust spray sunscreen the next time I go to the beach? No.