Once it’s baked, you flip it over and it looks like this:

Served in slices that make you smile and rub your belly in appreciation:

With dinner, we ate fresh baked bread that Jay made that afternoon. It comes from a Rose Levy Beranbaum recipe (found here) and it is amazing. The bread is so nice and thick, rich, and full of yum.

For the birthday boy, I made the Perfect Party Cake. This time, however, I’ve used the recipe as detailed in Dorie Greenspan’s book. Personally, I preferred the original Dorie version (which can be found here on tablefare’s blog) much more than the one I made for my birthday.

Covered in shredded coconut.

Over the weekend I celebrated my birthday and I took that opportunity to make myself and my family this amazing cake. I don’t know why but I think I was a little intimidated by the recipe and the cake itself but after putting the finished product on my cake stand, I thought, “That was easy!” Well, for the most part.

Because I didn’t have 4 inch cake pans, I made two 9 inch cakes. This was probably the most annoying part because my oven is incredibly tiny so I had to bake the two 9 inch cake batters one at a time.

In the recipe it says to use “seedless chocolate raspberry” preserves and I had no idea what that meant and I also couldn’t find that at the grocery store. What I did was to melt about half a cup of semi sweet chocolate chips and I mixed that with half a can of raspberry pie filling. I didn’t use rhubarb as the recipe says.

Overall, the cake was amazing but so very rich. I was struggling to finish my slice. As Jay said, “This is the kind of cake you can only eat one slice per week.” My little sister disagrees, “You can eat two slices per day.” I think I could probably eat one tiny slice per day. I’ll definitely be making this cake again but next time I’ll be changing the filling and I might make a lighter frosting.

Gorgeous, velvety lemony buttercream frosting.

White chocolate shavings on top.

The slice I couldn't finish.