Birthday Cake

You can't really know me and believe that I didn't make NES anything for his birthday.  And notice that in that last picture of him, he was eating a birthday dessert, but it was indeed in a restaurant.  Soooo, well, I didn't make him anything ON his birthday.  I'll admit it.  But, we did celebrate his birthday, along with his mom's, aunt's and uncle's this weekend.  And I baked.  Don't worry.

It really does seem to be that I have baking to do when it's the hottest day of the summer.  That officially makes 3 hottest days this summer.  Don't ask.  It just happens.  I mean, one of the nights, it was 82 degrees at 11:30 at night.  Craziness.

NES and I love red velvet cake.  And a long time ago, he suggested that I try this cake for his birthday cookout.  He had apparently forgotten.  It was excellent.

First, came the cheesecake.  It started, well, a little later at night than I expected.  Mom came last week, and we went to the beach.  It was a wonderful day, including a trip out to dinner and ice cream with her and NES.  This meant that the cheesecake got started, well, late.  I think it was after 8.  Yeah.  And it was really warm.  And having both the stove going for the water bath for the cheesecake and the oven preheating, it was nearly unbearable in the kitchen.

Making the cheesecake went pretty well, except for the fact that I have discovered that our oven is colder than average.  It only took, well, 20 minutes longer than the recipe said.

It took forever.  I finally got sick of waiting, and after the 20 minutes of cooling, I put it right in the fridge.  Bad form, I know, but there wasn't any meat or anything else that was going to suffer TOO much from a slight warm up in the fridge.  I was tired.

And then, the next morning, I almost lost it.  The bottom of the springform pan might have just fallen out as I was taking it out of the fridge.  Oops.  At least I didn't lose the whole thing.

Then I made the red velvet cake while the cheesecake froze.  The next morning.  It was still hot.  So warm.  Although, I realized I should bring a second fan into the kitchen.  It did help some.  And there may have been some other cooking going on, meaning I had the oven and stove on again.  Oh, and I had to go buy 9 inch cake pans.  I didn't have any.

I love that red velvet cake batter is so red.  It's awesome.

It ended up being very light red velvet cake -- I think if I make it again I'll add more cocoa.

And I got to use my new cooling racks!  And good thing too, because the counters are still kind of . . . full.  And well, my computer with the Olympics on didn't help that much.

And I threw some lunch in there somewhere.  Mmmmm.  And by the way, boilable corn holders are awesome.

Then came frosting.  This cake had . . . 4 full bars of cream cheese in it.  No wonder it weighed a ton.

And the surprising thing about all of this is that I had never actually frosted a layer cake before.  I don't know how I missed out on that.

And I even actually used a crumb coat.  Gasp!

But, I think it came out pretty well.  I was happy with it.  Next time I'm going to put some frosting between the cake layers and the cheesecake.  I think it'll make it more secure.  And I think that the fact that it was boiling hot in the kitchen actually came in handy in that it made the frosting nice and smooth.

And it even survived a trip halfway across the state!  Hooray!

And to cover up the holes put in it by the toothpicks (that my wonderful husband went out and got for me!), I added some of the extra frosting.  I was happy with how it worked out.  Like really happy.

I must say, it was yummy if not very chocolatey.  And, well, the last two pieces are for tonight!

And NES brought me sunflowers!  Yay!

 And I organized my cookbooks today!  They look so good!  Now, what happens when we get a new one, I don't know.