adventures in baking.

Today marks the third year I've celebrated Cori's birthday with him.  Each year has marked very different stages in our relationship- dating, engaged, married- and that progression is also evident in the cakes I've made for him.

Year One: Cori and I had been dating for just over 2 months.  I attempted to find out his favorite type of cake- facebook messaging his best friend's wife- but when this failed to bring an answer, I just went with my favorite type of cake- vanilla with chocolate icing.  From a box mix, obvi.  Our Bible study that Cori led was that night, and one of my closest friends from Richmond was visiting, so we arranged to bring the cake to study that night.  Sweet, humble, never-thinks-of-himself- Cori  was so surprised and pleased to have a birthday cake.



Year Two: At this point, I was the fiancee, so it was time to kick it up a notch.  By then, I knew that Cori's favorite cake is his mom's red velvet cake. 

Let me take a minute to share just how much Cori likes this cake.  He LOVES it, to the extent that when we were trying to figure out a wedding cake, he wanted his mom to make her red velvet cake.  I had to inform my sweet future hub (who obviously never watched A Wedding Story) that baking a cake for 150 guests is usually not something that mother of the groom does.  (Side note: We ended up having our wedding cake made by one of Cori's close friends from college- and groomsman's wife- Tram Taylor.  She had recently started a catering business, and let me tell you- our cake was delicious and beautiful!  But I digress.)

So I made Cori red velvet cake- from a mix again- even going so far as to call my future mother-in-law to figure out what type of icing she used.  (Cream cheese with chopped pecans)  As far as I remember, it turned out well.

Year Three (present day): By now, I'm the wife, and I knew I had to figure out this red velvet cake thing.  I had his mom's for the first time over Christmas, and let me tell you- it's worthy of all the adoration Cori had for it.  It is delicious and addicting.  His mom gave me the recipe- it's actually from her mother- and I've been waiting for Cori's birthday to roll around so I could give it my first try.  I'll be honest, I believe this is my first cake I've made from scratch.  After a few snafus- three trips to the store over the course of the week, and I STILL had to run to our neighbor's TWICE to borrow ingredients- the cake was made.

I know it doesn't look pretty- presentation is certainly something I need to work on, but my judgement was that it was pretty darn good for a first try.  Cori's thoughts?  That he wished he didn't have a head cold so he could actually taste it.  Poor thing!  But we've still got the majority of it left, so he's got time to get his tastebuds in order.  Our neighbors joined us for cake (more on that later!) and they agreed that it was yummy.  The only downfall?  Finding out how many calories are in just one piece of red velvet cake.  Yikes.  Shouldn't be surprising considering the icing alone is made of a stick of butter, a stick of cream cheese, pecans- and oh yeah, an entire pound of sugar.  But it was delicious, and so worth it!  Also, we got to use our cake platter and cake plates that we got for our wedding- always a fun thing. :)