Best Birthday Cake!

My dad's birthday was May 7th and, since I've gotten a few good cake decorating tools lately, I decided to try my hand (again) at baking a pretty cake!  This is really my second attempt.  I made this for Andrew's mom's birthday a few months ago but used a chocolate technique rather than piping.  As usual, I didn't given myself enough time to work on it so I had to rush through the last few steps.  I'm not posting a picture of the cake after I wrote on it because it was pretty much awful.  I used writing chocolate that was too runny and too warm and it just melted together.  I've had a lot of trouble with writing chocolate lately (I can never get the proper combination of chocolate and oil) so I think I'm going to write with icing next time.

With this cake, I meant to do the base color blue and the decorations white but I added the food coloring before I pulled out any icing because I just plain forgot.  So I ended up with two different shades of blue which actually turned out better than I thought it would.  My mom bought me a little turn table which is amazingly helpful for decorating as I can just turn the cake rather than trying to contort myself around it.  I very nearly messed up the piping by sticking the piping bag in the fridge while I was putting the base icing on.  Bad idea.  This icing is mostly butter and it turned rock solid.  I had to work the bad with my hands for quite awhile to warm it back up but the entire time I used it I just running into hard spots which messed up my piping.

Graduation and Wonton Soup

The past two weeks have been extremely busy here in Auburn.  Most of you who read this blog know this, but I'm graduating with my Master in Public Administration degree this Friday and I'll be heading to Washington, D.C. in June for an internship.  I work two jobs in Auburn in addition to being a full time student, so there has been quite of bit of work to wrap up in the last few weeks before I graduate and leave town.  


This wonton soup was a little different than wonton soup I have had in the past.  I think I would probably call this dumpling soup rather than wonton soup.  Regardless of what you think it should be called, it was delicious.  Assembling the dumplings was a little time consuming, but I had some fantastic help from a dear friend.  We did about 1/4 veggie dumplings and 3/4 meat dumplings and just folded them differently.  All in all, this is a meal that I can definitely see myself making again.

Key Lime Pound Cake

I love pound cake.  I love everything about it.  So, I'm always game to try different types of pound cake.  I've had the idea of a key lime pound cake stuck in my head for a few weeks so I went to the internet in pursuit of a proper recipe.  The internet never lets you down, right??  Wrong!  I only found 2 lime pound cake recipes and I really wasn't comfortable with either of them.  However, in my search through some of my current food blogger reads I stumbled upon a new site - Smitten Kitchen - and pretty much fell in love.  I spent several good hours that day reading back through Deb's posts and, with the help of some email correspondence, finally settled on a recipe for Lemon Pound Cake with the substitution of key limes for lemons.

The final product turned out impossibly delicate and quite tart but still very good.  While I don't think it quite beats my aunt's recipe for Cream Cheese Pound Cake (which will make an appearance here in the near future, I'm sure), it's certainly a light, summery option worthy of a special occasion.