The ULTIMATE chocolate birthday cake!

This time of year is a pretty busy one for our family aside from the normal swimming meets, indoor track practice, and valentine's day we also have birthdays.  40% of our family have February birthdays, within 5 days.... okay so it sounds more impressive when you break it down into percentages, ha ha! :)  In all reality 2 out of our family of 5 have February birthdays. Our eldest and myself, yep 5 days apart.... his, then mine.  But this year was a special year... an 18th birthday!  And what did we do to celebrate?  He spent the night at a friend's after the basketball game and then spent the day after lazing about.  We had DiGiorno pizza (per his request), breadsticks, Vanilla Coke, and the most divinely, decadent chocolate cake.  Remember these vegan cupcakes? Well I made the cake version. and it is simply stunning!

 (it was cloudy and grey the day I baked it... so we waited..... to photograph it.  now it is sunny buy windy!  you should have seen the cloth flying... so this was taken on the run!)

Now about baking this cake... 

-mix just like you would for cupcakes

-pour batter into 2 9" round cake pans that have been well greased & lined with parchment paper

-bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes.

-prick center of cake with toothpick to check for doneness.. toothpick should come out clean.

-allow to sit for 5 minutes before removing from pan. (run knife around edge to loosen edges.)

-center filling is a portion of the frosting lightening with real whipping cream.  (I did it to preference)

We topped the cake with raspberries and a drizzle of (canned) "whipped" cream around the edges.  The "whipped" cream ran but made a lovely design.

This cake is rich and delicious (and our 18 year old ate some for breakfast this morning with a glass of milk and a banana! it is that good!!) 

Linky Followers Blog Hop

As we are all more than aware Google Friend Connect is going away.... and it looks like it is going to be much sooner than later.  In fact it will be 1 March 2012 for non-blogger platforms.  So rather than loss so many of my lovely followers I am encouraging you all to change over to the new Linky Follower.

So I decided to join Cheri's blog hop to help get the information out!  In fact even before I joined the Blog hop Cheri was my very first new REAL follower after I joined Linky Follower.  Talk about excited!!

So here are the RULES:

1. you MUST have the LINKY FOLLOWERS tool on your site to participate.

If you see that your link has been deleted you need to add the LINKY FOLLOWER tool to your site and then come back over and re-enter your link
{You can have both the LINKY FOLLOWERS & GFC on your site but you must have the LINKY FOLLOWERS toolto participate in this party hop.}

2. You MUST follow the person who has the party on their site as a thank you.

3. Just add your blog button to the LINKY PARTY below.

4.Then grab the BLOG HOP code

You will find the code right under the Linky Party where it says CLICK HERE TO ENTER–

just under that it says: WHAT IS A BLOG HOP? GET THE CODE HERE

Click on GET THE CODE HERE and enter it into a post on your site.

5. Then you follow other bloggers–(as many as you want)

–leave each one of the blogs that you follow a comment letting them know you are following them and ask them to follow you back.

If you want to add the BLOG HOP to your own site you will get lots of new followers–(see rule #2)

Thanks you all!  Stop on by (the posts have been a bit sporatic but that is about to change!  for reals!  I even have a no kidding schedule and everything thanks to so many friends who have been such an encouragement to me... but first I am off to spend the holiday with my family and then celebrate a few days of birthdays!)  Once again thank you for stopping by and joining up!