Snow Day Birthday!

Super Bowl Sunday, and we get in the car in Nashville just about the the time Carrie Underwood starts the National Anthem and pull in the driveway hours later as the confetti is flying and awards are presented. A long volleyball weekend was over, and I had a lot of things planned for Monday morning. Scott turns 50, what a milestone. I had a hair appointment scheduled, then a little shopping, groceries and home to bake a cake. We were going to go out to dinner since Christina had practice and do family dinner (sans Nic) on Tuesday. Mother Nature had a different plan.

I just couldn't get back to sleep this morning, so I got up to make my list for groceries, pull out the recipes, unpack, that sort of stuff. Then I looked outside. SNOW! Lots of it. And still snowing, the snow was gorgeous, fat flakes. I checked the school updates, cancelled, that was good as Christina is feeling poorly. I checked the baking supplies, damn. It is so hard to make a home made cake without butter. Me, out of butter, now that is surprising. So I went and woke up the birthday boy. I told him he could thank me later for the lovely snow I arranged for him, but right now I needed him up and at 'em to get me to the supermarket or he wasn't getting cake! Chocolate cake, with buttercream icing, made by "moi" is a great motivator because we were off in minutes!

We came home to sausage and waffles for breakfast and I searched for a cake recipe. Why not try something new I thought, I had all day. I decided on a Mile High Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream and Chocolate Ganache that I found on Epicurious.com. Well, sort of decided anyways. I have admitted numerous times that I am no good at following directions, and I took a perfectly good recipe, at least according to the reviews, and changed it.

I followed the cake recipe as written, and baked the three layers for only about 40-45 minutes which was too long. Perhaps it was the convection, but those suckers were dry around the edges and fell apart a little. But that's what frosting is for! So the frosting. Real buttercream. Egg whites, simple syrup, vanilla paste and a flipping pound of butter. I could seriously vomit right now. And that is just from licking my fingers, this is SOOO rich. I love meringue, I can eat it right out of the bowl, and it about killed me to drop that pound of butter into it a tablespoon at a time.

I sliced my 3 layers into 6 and started frosting and stacking. There was so much buttercream that I felt the cake would be inedible if I used it all. I also had the small detail of Scott specifically asking for chocolate buttercream, not ganache, which is what the recipe called for. So I took what was left over, added a couple of squares of melted, unsweetened chocolate and some confectioner's sugar. Whipped it up and iced the whole cake with it. Voila, chocolate buttercream.

So as the day wound down, the snow turned to rain and the beautiful birthday snowfall fell in clumps from the trees. The roads look better, but who knows what the temperature will do tonight. Drop and bring us more snow? Sleet? Doesn't matter. We are having meaty, mushroomy spaghetti (birthday request), fresh baked bread, salad and Mile High Chocolate Cake with Vanilla and Chocolate Buttercream.
Happy Birthday Scottie!