Chop's Birthday & Aurifil Thread

in ,

Yesterday was Mr. McPorkchop's birthday! I threw him a little party to celebrate. I'm big on birthdays. My birthday I try to drag out as long as possible, I start reminding people in March. Which doesn't sound crazy until you learn that my birthday is in August. It's not that I want a zillion presents, but more because I love celebrating. Anything. Had a good hair day? Party. Got a quilt in a book? Party. Got a big wholesale order? Party. Taught a successful class? Party. Went a whole week without buying fabric or yarn? Party! (at the fabric/yarn shop ;)) jkjkjk! (kind of ;))

But I have a feeling when your birthday is so close to Christmas...you get kind of screwed. Pardon my harsh language here but really. Combined gifts because the person obviously remembered Christmas but your birthday? Not so much. Christmas cards that say Happy Birthday. No way! Not for my ChopChop! So I spent the day yesterday making him a perfect birthday. I made chicken enchiladas, a funfetti cake from scratch, a quilt, some decorations. He got home from work and was promptly fed about 90 pounds of food. And tonight we are going to a local restaurant! woo woo!

Chop's Birthday Cake Recipe As adapted from Fannie Farmer Cookbook & my mom ;)

Makes two 8 inch round layers

1 ¾ cups cake flour (minus 2 tbls if you don't have cake flour & are using all purpose) 2 tsp baking powder ¼ tsp salt 10 TBL softened butter 1 cup sugar 3 egg whites – aprx ½ cup 1 ½ tsp vanilla (clear if you want a pure white cake, paste/standard extract if you don't mind an off white cake) 1/2 cup cold water 1/4 cup jimmies (I like a lot. You can use less :))

Heat oven to 325. Grease the bottom of the cake pans. Add a circle of parchment paper to each pan. Grease the parchment.

Sift dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cream the butter and gradually add in the sugar. Beat until blended. Add egg whites one at a time, mixing one minute in between each addition. Stir water & vanilla together. I used vanilla bean paste and my cake turned out off white, if you use clean vanilla extract you'll have a perfectly pure white cake. Alternate between adding the water/vanilla and the flour mixture to the creamed sugar. Once combined fold in jimmies. Separate evenly between two cake pans and bake at 325 for 20-25 minutes using a tooth pick test. Mine was done at 18 but our oven is slightly cranky.

For the frosting I used this Classic Buttercream and it'll be my new go-to frosting recipe.

We had a super fun night! And I had a cake for breakfast. So that's how my day is going so far ;)

In other exciting news, I'm one of Aurifil's 2012 Designers! Super neat right? I'm really excited to work with their 12 wt thread...and...my month is OCTOBER. mmHMMM!! You know I'll be stitching up something crazy cute & Halloween-y! Or Autumn-y! Or Kawaii! It's top secret until then. Each month I'm going to work on my fellow designers blocks & blog about them, I love the group of ladies, each one has a totally unique style and I know everyone is bringing something rad to the table!

You can (and should!) quilt-a-long with us! You can win aurifil thread by entering your photo of the blocks we work on into the flickr group!

I'm hoping since Pam and I have months close to each other we can get together & work on our projects at Starbucks! woo woo!!!

I'm off to finish up a zillion last minute projects so I can take a few days off! woo woo!