Happy Birthday Raji

This week we all celebrated Raji's birthday. If there is one person I know that likes to celebrate.  It is definitely Raji.  She is one of the happiest people that I have ever met, and she always seems to override worries with a shrug of her shoulders, to be followed by an "Oh well. Do you want to go out?!".  She is not the type to miss a party, so she surely was not going to let a little day like her birthday pass with out some fun.  Since the only great bakery in our area costs an arm and a leg and requires an order practically a week in advance, I decided to bake a birthday cake.  After much deliberation over what kind of cake to make, carrot? red velvet? tiramisu? It was Brian that actually suggested something more simple. (Yes, I'll give him some credit)  We decided on a simple, but very moist and buttery sweet "Golden Cake" with Chocolate Cream frosting.  

    I used both recipes from one of my favorite authors (and scientist), Shirley O. Corriher.  She has a fabulous, very scientific baking book called BakeWise, 

which will answer every question that you may have ever had about baking.  Like... Why is my cake sunken in the middle? Why do my brownies have a crispy layer on top. Why are my cupcakes dome shaped?  If you want some serious baking details as to the hows and whys, this will cover all of your bases.  She has experimented with just about everything....so that we don't have to.

   This cake uses three egg yolks and two eggs,

 which gives it the nice rich eggy flavor and the beautiful golden hue when it is baked.  It also requires that you fold in 1/2 cup of whipped cream which makes the cake even lighter and fluffier than normal. 

I am really not big on frosting in general, but this one is actually one of my favorite.  The base for the frosting is fresh sour cream!

 That helps to make it rich and chocolaty but not sugary or overwhelmingly sweet.

After two days of baking, cooling, frosting,

just a tad bit of decorating (which I completely forgot that one should do to a birthday cake...),

our small Cleveland kitchen was a officially a mess.

(But not a problem, I was  able to get it cleaned up before Brian could arrive home and freak out.)  After a long day at work for all of us, Raji was thrilled to see her surprise,

and while we were expecting about 12 plus people to stop by, with the early spring snow storm there were only seven of us.  Awesome! We were all excited to have a large slice of it. (Sorry, no pictures of us enjoying it...I still have to work on putting down the fork and picking up the camera). The cake turned out incredibly moist and flavorful. Who knew that golden cake with chocolate frosting was Raji's favorite? Lucky me. Oh and good call Brian.