Cake, Cake, and More Cake

Boy do I feel sorry for people who don't (or can't) eat cake. Because I love it. And it's come to pass that the tail end of summer and the better part of fall seems to be cake-making season for me. There are so many occasions to celebrate, and as I'm sure you know, I hardly need an excuse to bake. Let's take a look back at last year's sweets:

July
Our Wedding Cake Vanilla-Almond with Berries & Pastry Cream; Devil's Food with Mocha Whipped Cream; Pumpkin with Ginger Buttercream

August
Devil's Food with Mocha Whipped Cream, for Julia's brother Joel's birthday

September
My birthday. Can't remember exactly what I made, but I do remember it was the ugliest cake ever to emerge from my kitchen. Pretty sure chocolate and strawberries were involved, but it was a sloppy mess.

October
Ellen mentioned cake on facebook, so Julia told her she should come over and I'd make her one, and a few days later I did. Sadly, I no longer have any recollection of what kind of cake it was...
Green Tea Cake with Red Bean Paste filling for Alice's birthday (which was light and delicious and really needs to be made again soon). And yes, I know her birthday is in July, but this is when we all had the same free spot in our schedules to actually get together and celebrate it.

November
Would ordinarily be a month for making Julia's birthday cake, but last year I made pie. Apple pie with FRESH FIGS. It was the BEST. PIE. EVER. Almost made me convert to a pie-as-dessert-of-choice girl. Almost.

The cake schedule is a little lighter this year, thankfully. But Joel's birthday came around again, as birthdays do, and so there was a Heavenly Chocolate Cake Roll (gluten-free!) with strawberries added to the whipped cream filling.

I should have probably made a cake to celebrate the arrival of our new niece, Sophia, on August 16th, but I don't think she's picked a favorite flavor yet...

And last night we threw a party to celebrate marriage equality in New York. [Yeah, I know we live in Chicago, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or whatever, so eventually it's gonna walk this way, right? Plus, we were raising money for LAMBDA LEGAL, and you can never go wrong with that. And, you know, we're still not equal enough. And further more, we were celebrating in solidarity with a bunch of other people at other parties all around the country. So. A party was had. Cake was eaten. Champagne was consumed in copious amounts. Drunken neighbors crashed. But I digress, as always.] Ahem.

So. Naturally, I made some Marriage Equality Cake. The purple side is Devil's Food with Mocha Whipped Cream (are you sensing a pattern here?) and the green side is Vanilla-Almond with Apricot-Almond filling. Both were quite tasty, and I'll be eating the leftovers all week.

Which brings us back to my birthday. I'm just gonna let you drool over what I have planned:

Twelve Layer Mocha Cake

I'll wait while you pencil in the date on your calendar. That's September 18th, my place, 3ish. See you there.