~26~ Another Birthday, Another Year

Well folks, I am officially another year older! Yesterday I celebrated my 27th birthday and I must say, it was fantastic!  After work, I went to dinner with Jake and his family at Red Robin, had a very delicious (and free!) burger alongside a bottomless root beer float.  I also got some really nice gifts, with my favorite 2 being from Jake.

Wednesday after work, he surprised me with a tee-shirt from the show Big Bang Theory.  For those of you who haven't seen it, you really need to.  It is HILARIOUS!  To sum up of the meaning behind the shirt-one of the main characters is Sheldon, who is an OCD physicist living next door to the stereotypical blonde hottie, Penny, who moved to CA to become an actress, but ends up working as a waitress at the Cheesecake factory.  In one of the episodes, Sheldon gets sick and all of his friends avoid him because he's so whiny and needy when he gets sick.  Penny, doesn't know any better and gets roped into taking care of Sheldon, who requests that she sings him a song his mom used to sing him when he was sick as a child called, "Soft Kitty".

For my "real" present though, Jake got me the Cuttlebug I was wanting!!  I'm so excited to play around with it and see how it enhances my cards!  Be on the lookout for some upcoming posts, highlighting some projects with it. 

Now I know what some of you are thinking; what's a birthday without some cake?  Don't worry, there was definitely cake!  As you know, ever since I was little, I have loved baking-particularly cakes and pies.  Unlike most children, I never wanted my mom to make my cake-in fact I would get mad if she did-so every year, I bake and decorate my own cake.  This year, I made a yellow cake with white buttercream frosting.  Unfortunately, I'm not what some people would call a true baker because I use a boxed mix and don't bake it from scratch.  However, my real joy is in the decorating part.  While my cake isn't from scratch, my buttercream frosting is.  I use the Wilton recipe for making it:

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup shortening (I use Crisco)

4 Cups of powdered confectioners sugar

2 Tbsp Milk

1 Tsp clear vanilla

Step 1: Cream the butter and shortening together

Step: 2: mix in the vanilla and milk

Step 3: Add in the powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time, blending thoroughly 

To assemble my cake, I use a bread knife to make sure each layer is flat so that they will line up flush.  I put a layer of frosting between them and then put a thin layer all around it to create a crumb coat, which seals in all of the crumbs so that when you fully frost the cake, you get a nice smooth and clean coat.  Just make sure that after your crumb coat, you let the frosting set.  I'm not totally happy with how the cake came out because I made a mistake on the side detail of the cake and had to start over, creating a not so smooth look, but in the end it tasted delicious! And that's all that really matters-right?

What's your favorite kind of cake?

Until next time,