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This past Wednesday was my birthday.  I decided to bake myself (and my dad) a cake, as my folks were in town for the weekend.  I have to say, it was a lovely cake wreck, and I don't think that I'll be abandoning my day job to become a cake decorator anytime soon. 

This is the second cake I have ever made from scratch.  The first one is one that I made for Heather on her birthday, and Hunter, the overweight kitten, helped himself to the frosting. I swear, I am going to put him on I can has cheezburger one of these days....

Anyways, back to the cake.  This may get my ovary card revoked, but I am not that big a fan of chocolate.  I mean, sure, chocolate chip cookies are great, but chocolate cake?  Ick!  I like white cake (how boring) with white frosting (zzzzzzzz!).  Oh, and the frosting can't be too sweet, because I don't really care for super-sweet things either.  

Maybe instead of a cake, I should just mound a pile of potato chips on a plate, stick a candle in it, and go wild. Or perhaps a can of spaghettios, with McDonald's cheeseburgers...  ;)

Back to the cake.  I ended up putting a fruit filling the in the middle of the cake, as that was what my kick-ass dad requested.  Here's a picture of the cake, sliced:

Here's a picture of the (many) cocktail(s) that I had to have while doing this, due to my cake anxieties:

 Hello Gin and Tonic, lovely meeting you here!

In the end, I settled on a Strawberry-Rhubarb filling, which I didn't even use a recipe for! (This is the cue for applause).  I'll summarize what I put into the filling:

Frozen strawberries, thawed

Frozen Rhubarb, thawed (remember my whole love of freezing foods?  It comes in handy sometimes)

splash of orange juice

enough sugar to make the concoction taste sweet, and not too tart (so, to taste, I guess)

splash of vanilla at the end (maybe 1 tsp?)

Put first 4 ingredients in a saucepan, and begin to cook over medium heat.  I've just realized that I pretty much made Jam without added pectin, which makes the strawberry-rhubarb cake filling AWESOME on English muffins in the morning.  Cook until you're happy with the consistency, then add vanilla, and cook a little more.  

Wow, what a great recipe, right?  Well, here's the recipes for the cake and frosting, click the link and it'll take you to Smitten Kitchen, which is one of my favorite cooking blogs. The Smitten Kitchen is awesome, and takes much better pictures than I do!

Cake

Frosting 

Something to note: I've recently discovered google reader, and I think I enabled this blog to show up on reader.  Check it out!  Let me know if something doesn't work. 

Off to a well-deserved (in my humble opinion, of course) vacation!  Happy Thanksgiving!