Birthday Number 37

This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on May 4, 2010). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

Yesterday was a nice day — not terribly eventful, but a nice, relaxing birthday.

The day started with a breakfast of Hawaiian style french toast, made with Hawaiian sweet bread, drenched in coconut syrup, and served with fresh-cut pineapple. Really good. Even neater, the one store around here that used to sell coconut syrup doesn’t seem to anymore, so Prairie bought some coconut milk and made the syrup herself.

The rest of the morning involved a bit of responsibility: Prairie went in to work for a few hours, and I went off to finish my Legal Research law library project, this time at the Maleng Regional Justice Center branch of the King County Law Library here in Kent. Once I was done with that, I picked Prairie up, and we headed home for lunch. Lunch was “Thanksgiving sandwiches” — good deli turkey and cranberry sauce on fresh baked rolls — and we were able to eat in the sun on the porch until yesterday’s wind started blowing the food around and we ducked back inside.

After lunch came the big project of the day: the cake. Last Christmas, Prairie’s sister H had given us a cute sandwich cookie cake pan set that we’d been saving for the right occasion, and this was it! Prairie had decided to follow the recipe that came with the cake pans, and the further we got into it, the more amused we got — this is a really rich, really chocolate-y recipe. Over a half cup of cocoa powder, seven ouces of bittersweet chocolate, 14 tablespoons of butter, almost two cups of sugar…wow. We mixed it all up, set it to baking, and then Prairie made up a double batch of her family recipe cream cheese frosting for the filling.

A little bit later, after cooling, frosting, and assembling…the cake was done!

My 37th Birthday Cake 1

And here’s a shot with a real Oreo cookie as a size comparison:

My 37th Birthday Cake 4

Now that’s a birthday cake!

After admiring the cake for a few minutes, we each went off to be responsible for a while, with Prairie doing some work for her job from home while I worked on homework.

Once the afternoon was done, we settled in for an evening of vegging in front of the TV, had pizza from CanAm Pizza (who we just discovered, they’re really good — last night I had their Tandoori Chicken Pizza, which is definitely worth munching on), and, eventually, did our best to work our way through a couple pieces of that cake. Amusingly, as it turns out, that monster is a little too rich for us — each bite is like four bites of normal chocolate cake — I checked on a scale, and it’s an eight pound cake! We’re going to do our best to get through as much as we can, but next time we’ll be using a more normal cake mix instead of the über-rich version from the box. It’s good — so very good — but oh, wow, so rich.

In other words, perfect for a birthday.

1 thought on “Birthday Number 37”

  1. What a fantastic cake! Well done Prairie, well done…

    Oh, and happy birthday to you Michael. I’m putting a little something together for you, but do to my inability to get my (beep) together I now hope to have your 37th birthday gift finished before you hit the big 40.

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