Birthday Cake and Meatloaf Cake

Happy Cake, Happy Cui!!

"Solid Gold Carrot Cake with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting" from Tish Boyle's The Cake Book. Also known as, Cui's birthday cake!

I made this (with Jon's help) after my attempts of making an "all natural" Key-Lime Pie from a recipe from FreshDirect recipes. The Key-Lime Pie failed pretty miserably. It looked fine with the meringue topping, but the filling never set. When we cut it open, it just quickly oozed out and about the pan. Also, the recipe's crust really sucked, so I had to redo it using Jim Villas's pie crust recipe from Glory of Southern Cooking. The crust was the only part that was actually edible.

This cake took a few hours to make since after making the pie, I had a ton of dishes to wash. Thanks goodness we ordered tacos from Tehuitzingo. If we had to make dinner too, I might have had another break down. (Yeah, those scenes when Julie from Julie/Julia having a breakdown that I thought were pretty outrageous and kind of dumb. Those happened. Jon's now pretty weary when I say I want to bake on the weekends.)

Anyway, the cake came out FREAKIN AWESOMELY. The frosting, the carrots, the cake--all came out so good (if I don't say so myself). We all ate half the cake that night--and I gave Cui some to take home with her; Bryan and I had some more cake for breakfast that morning; I gave Kat a slice and my parents some slices; and there was about a slice left that I made Jon cut a sliver off for Wee before he finished eating it. (Wee, unfortunately, never got to taste it though we kept it saved for her for about two weeks. Jon and I ate it, and it still wasn't that bad of a cake.)

Cui's birthday was supposed to be a surprise with old friends, but the only (and probably best) surprise was that Bryan--with a "y"--made it out that night. (This new Blogger thing is weird, so I'm not sure how vertical photos that need to be vertical-ized work--otherwise, there'd be more photos.)

We put on 25 glittery candles, but couldn't light some of the middle ones--I bet you can't tell. You're not supposed to ingest glitter which made it a bit difficult to eat, since a lot of wax and glitter landed on the cake with so many candles. (I guess as we get older, I need to consider making larger cakes.)

"I said, 'What about Breakfast at Tiffany's?...I guess that's the one thing we got...."--somewhat randomly Bryan said this, which was hilarious once we realized where it was from. We also discussed eating seal eyes for some reason, and Bryan told us about the movie he just finished making. We then played Wario on the Wii.

Pam had to jet to send Param off, and the birthday girl herself had to catch a bus home unfortunately. Bryan, Jon, and I partied it up with a new game of Zelda: "B-Link."

Happy Birthday, Cui!!!




MEATLOAF Cake!!!
In addition to making a carrot cake, I made a meat cake some Friday evening for dinner. (As you can hopefully see in the photo, it looks more cake than loaf-like.) It's inspired a little from the meatloaf recipes from The Bon Appetit Cookbook and a little from At Home with Magnolia, but ultimately, it's whatever looked good at Citarella. I bought some crazy expensive ground beef; dried wild mushrooms that came in a convenient Citarella package (which ultimately really made the meatloaf); dried tomatoes (which was right next to the mushrooms); an onion; celery; and a french baguette--which I guess is really not the way to go when making "fresh bread crumbs." (I think that was all the ingredients.) It came out pretty good though--especially with fancy mustard and ketchup.

Jon and I ate half for dinner and the rest the next day. I'm not sure if I'd made it again any time soon though it was crazy easy to make.