Birthday Party!

As has been the case for a few years now, my birthday celebrations are starting to last closer to a week rather than just one day of intense celebration. I like it! It's fun to have something to look forward to every day for awhile rather than one day that may or may not go according to plan. Friday kicked off my birthday week/10+ days. Jeremiah and I went to eat at Charleston's again-- I'm pretty sure it will be our new celebration restaurant! I got an awesome sandwich that had chicken, swiss, tomatoes, bacon, avocado, sprouts, and honey mustard-- shocking even myself, I didn't remove any of those items from it! It was all wonderful. Then I got some birthday ice cream!



Granted, it was a scoop of vanilla ice cream with (probably) spray can whipped cream and some chocolate sauce and a blue candle. But I ate it all-- minus the candle ;-) Oh, and I let Jeremiah have a couple bites, but not much more. It made me happy



As you know from the previous post, I decided to make my own birthday cake this year. And boy did I pick a winner.



Doesn't it look like it needs a bright blue ribbon on it? No? Well it definitely looks like it needs to be in my belly. Let me tell you a little about this cake. I started by sifting (yes, I was very particular about following the directions precisely) all the dry ingredients. Then I added in all the wet and ingredients and whisked away (yes, I mixed it up by hand too!)



Then I poured it into three, greased 9" pans and baked it. I probably checked it more than necessary, but I really didn't want to burn it or mess it up. Then I made this:



Delicious, glorious, wonderful peanut butter cream cheese frosting! I put it in the middle and all over the cake... see?





This was my first try at a three layer cake. But we aren't done yet. Now we need to add some peanut butter chocolate ganache...



Oh yeah, that's the stuff! We had to leave it alone for a few hours. So we went to Red Robin and got awesome hamburgers and bottomless fries! Then we came back and played Mario Party 8-- my new Wii game from hubby before we ate the cake. Now if I wasn't so in to trying new things, this cake would be my birthday cake for the rest of my life! It was amazing and everyone should get a chance to try it sometime. Definitely worth 5 stars in my book! After cake and ice cream, we played Cranium. It was a lot of fun and we had a great night. Thanks to my friends who came and spent the evening with us! It was a great birthday weekend and my birthday's not even here yet! To life... full of birthday celebrations!