Birthday cake!

Once again, a large lapse has befallen my posting. So what better way than to start the new year with my birthday post? Lol, this past weekend was my birthday (1/21) and also the ringing in of the Lunar New Year! Hehehe, it’s my year (and Kunku’s!) because we’re both dragons ^_^ Dede tried to plan a surprise party for me .. but failed to keep it a surprise <3

Friday, we started off at my place with Sangria and cake. There was Peach and Mint white, Citrus and Pear red, and Grapefruit and Mint white. For recipes check out my post on birthday sangria at my food blog.

Birthday Sangria!

It all started out with a new cupcake I was making for the holidays. I’ll be posting these recipes on my other blog, so if you want the recipes, check out http://shlieka.blogspot.com/2012/02/birthday-trifle.html

The Sugar Cookie Cupcake

This cupcake was kind of an accident. I was messing around with the measurements of the       vanilla cupcake recipe and didn’t quite know what would turn out. The result was a sugar cookie cupcake. It taste and looks just like a fluffy, soft sugar cookie on top. I had so many cupcakes, and nobody to eat them. Fast forward a few days later, and I’m thinking ‘hey, I need to figure out what to do with these cupcakes without wasting food. ‘ The fantastic part is that I had just dug out 3 jars of Trader Joe’s Lemon Curd. I love this stuff, and it was getting close to it’s expiration date. I just knew that I had to make a trifle, to put a little moisture back into the cakes, they would soak this lemon curd right up. But when I opened it up … the consistency had thickened over time. I wasn’t sure how I was going to spread it over crumbled cakes. Thankfully, I also had a bag of Meyer Lemons in the fridge that I’d been meaning to turn into homemade Lemon Curd.

Mmmmm lemon curd ..

The left jar is the homemade lemon curd, and the right is the lemon curd from Trader Joe’s. I ended having having extra homemade lemon curd, which I whisked in a bowl with the Trader Joe’s lemon curd. The homemade curd was very thin, which helped thin the Trader Joe’s lemon curd to a perfect consistency. I used the rest of the heavy whipping cream and made whipped cream with a little lemon curd whipped into it.

The first trifle ^_^

The first trifle I made was so delicious. Layers of sugar cookie cake, lemon curd, blueberries and whipped cream. Dede went crazy over it which is why we decided to make it for my birthday. We used canned peaches, strawberries between the layers for my birthday cake and dotted the top with blackberries before decorating with piped chocolate.

Me making a wish! This was my first time piping chocolate ^_^. It was so much fun! I made hearts and shoes and swirls. We got the gold candles from Party City and the freaky thing is that when they melt, they’re still gold on the inside!

After cake and drinks, we headed to the The Smith for food, and ended the night at Santo’s Party House! I’ll be posting a birthday post 2 with pictures from the rest of the night/weekend as soon as I get them n_n.