Over the weekend my boyfriend and I took a quick trip to Milwaukee to celebrate our birthdays together. As birthdays imply, it was a very indulgent weekend full of wine, dessert and so much other goodness!
To be honest, I enjoyed myself so much this weekend, I didn’t even think about what cake I was going to be making until Monday night. Oops.
I’ve never been a fan of goodbyes. Whether I’m the one leaving or it’s someone else, I usually end up choking back tears and feeling mopey about it for days.
Case in point, I found out a few weeks ago one of my closest friends was moving to Minnesota for an amazing job opportunity (we’re talking actual childhood dream job!!!). Rather than being devastated about her impending departure, I distracted myself by researching potential cakes to serve at the going away party.
Anyone who’s anyone that shops at Trader Joe’s knows their bananas are the best deal in town. At 19 cents a pop they’re hard to beat. Throw them in you smoothies, pack them as a mid-afternoon snack, sprinkle them over a little peanut butter toast–you can’t go wrong. However, you can go wrong when you leave them on your counter uneaten all week. And since you’re anyone who’s anyone, you know that Trader Joe’s produce isn’t one to wait around for you to eat it. Don’t even get me started on how fast their conventional sweet potatoes last!
I double checked the astrology charts to make sure mercury wasn’t in retrograde. Maybe it has to do with the change of the seasons, but I suddenly and unexpectedly found myself craving chocolate cake. While I usually go for light fruitier flavors with a nut flour based recipe, I could not get the thought of biting into a luscious slice of chocolate cake out of my head.
But why vegan?
Seventh through twelfth grade, I coveted my best friends lunch box. Not because of the sandwiches with hand cut rotisserie chicken and munster cheese layered between ‘everything’ ciabatta rolls. Definitely not because of that. I was envious of what came after the sandwich. When the savory was over, she casually whipped out a parcel fastidiously wrapped in shiny tin foil. Inside the palm sized package was tucked the most delicious mini morsel pound cake her mom made fresh every week! If I was lucky, she’d let me have a bite.
When I received a Facebook invite to celebrate my friends upcoming birthday my immediate thought was what kind of cake will I make? At a loss, I decided to phone a few friends to join me in the kitchen to pull off a cake for a crowd and brainstorm some ideas. After all, friends don’t let friends bake alone.
I have a hunch that I’m going to be celebrating a lot of birthdays this year. The first of which I got to celebrate this weekend.
I have a friend who is not on Facebook, which made it embarrassingly easy to miss her birthday. Instead of a passive “sorry I missed it!”text, I decided to throw her a Saturday night dinner party with none other than a flourless chocolate cake finale.
