Chocolate Cake

Fudgy, chocolatey, yummy cake!  A favorite here in the Harseverse for birthdays.

Ingredients:

1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt (reduce by half if using salted butter)
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup strong black coffee
1/2 cup butter or coconut oil, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans or one 13x9x2-inch baking pan.  (I use one 10-inch, one 9-inch, and one 6-inch pans, dividing the batter evenly between them to get the three-layer cakes pictured below.)

1. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, buttermilk, coffee, melted butter and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes (batter will be thin).

1. Pour batter evenly into prepared pans.

1. Bake 30 to 35 minutes for round pans, 35 to 40 minutes for rectangular pan or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.

1. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely.

Now choose your frosting...  The vanilla compliments the chocolate cake quite nicely, kind of how the icing in an oreo just works with the cookie. But if you have a serious chocolate craving, stick with the chocolate frosting.  Both are delicious!

Chocolate Frosting

1/2 cup butter, softened
2 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted
3 cups powdered (icing) sugar
3 Tbsp milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Combine all ingredients and mix with a hand or stand mixer.  Frost cooled cake.

Vanilla Cream Frosting

1-1/4 cups (300 mL) butter, softened
6 cups (1.5 L) icing sugar
3/4 cup (175 mL) whipping cream
2 tsp (10 mL) vanilla
 

In large bowl, beat butter until fluffy. Alternately beat in sugar and cream, making 3 additions of sugar and 2 of cream. Beat in vanilla.  Frost cooled cake. 

Four

A-team is four!  He's our goofball as you can tell by my attempt to get a "nice birthday picture" above.  He's always on the go and plays well by himself.  He also still likes playing with his mom too.  But it's usually fighting, and he always wins.  Unless we play cars.  But that usually gets violent too.  He's creative as well, but not really into drawing.  His play is creative.  Any object can be something, but then change into something else and the whole scenario changes as well.  He likes helping me in the kitchen and he'll help with other stuff like dusting and sweeping. "I'm making the house all shiny!"  We love his squeaky voice and silly walks.

We celebrated the day with friends for dinner.  His birthday dinner choice we had eaten the night before, though, because just the thought of cooking pancakes for 10 people made me tired.  So we had slow cooker chili and challah! 

Eight Months

Miss S is two-thirds of a year old!  She loves to play peek-a-boo, and will put things (or her fists) on her forehead and peek out from underneath with a big grin.  She eats a bit of solid food now, and particularly likes banana chunks.  She's a cheerful baby who loves to babble and shriek and blow raspberries.  Her family gets to see that side of her - strangers, not so much.  I think to them she is serious.  If anyone tries to talk to her she'll just stare at them blankly.  And check to see that Mommy is still close by. 
She doesn't like to be held by anyone but Mommy or Daddy.  Everyone else is too scary, apparently.  She knows the words kiss, (leans forward for one) bath, (evokes a huge grin) where are you? (during peekaboo) and Daddy.  She still dislikes tummy time.  It will be a while before she learns to crawl. ;)