I am by no means a baking fan. I bake, but only when I'm prego, 'cause as soon as there's a bun in the oven, for some reason, there are buns in the oven, or it's a special occasion. Today is one such special occasion. St. Patrick's Day also happens to be John's birthday. My Baby Daddy, boyfriend, common law husband or sous chef. Whichever you prefer. So, to show John just how much I love him without buying him a new set of drums... again, I decided to bake him a cake. Now, when I bake a cake, it usually involves paper cuts from opening the Betty Crocker box. I don't do well with measurements. Pinches and dashes and glugs are the units of choice when I'm cooking. I read recipes to get the gist, I never actually follow them. As such, all previous baking from scratch attempts have not been all that successful because I usually get impatient and don't measure this or that precisely enough, and then I get agro at the amount of flour on the black shirt I inevitably wear when baking. It just never really seems to work out as well as the recipes make it sound. Sometimes edible, never amazing. But today, my friends, is a new day. Oh yes, a very new day. I knew I was going to attempt a cake for John's birthday and I promised myself to check two days beforehand to make sure I had all the ingredients. I promised myself I would test and then commit to the real deal. I also promised myself that a) I would read the entire recipe 3 times before starting and b) every measurement would be as exact as humanly possible. I picked an old recipe I had for vanilla cake with chocolate ganache filling and butter cream icing. I attempted the ganache yesterday and it didn't turn out quite how I wanted it, so I sent it with John today in his lunch with cut up strawberries and toothpicks as a fondue for lunch. Today, I perfected it. The cake, the ganache, the icing, it turned out amazing. Everything tastes fantastic. In fact, the only thing that could use a little work, is my piping skills. Check it out (Di da is what my son first called John when he was like 11 months old):



And now, my lovely foodies, it looks like I'm going to be spending the rest of my day cleaning the kitchen, doing laundry and showering because an unskilled, impatient baker does not leave a clean kitchen behind them. Bah. All in the name of love.

cake, st. patrick's day, baking, cooking, kitchen, recipe, icing, ganache