Birthday Cakes, 1 and 2

The youngerchild has turned 13 and celebrated twice, once with each set of grandparents. Who live in different states, so that meant two cakes. Never a problem, as the youngerchild has been asking for both these cakes for a long time.

First off, with my in-laws, I made a Brasilian Carrot Cake. I used the recipe I posted before but instead of fudge frosting I made a simple chocolate ganache. When I first poured the ganache on the warm cake, it filled the pan. I turned my head for a second and then looked again and the ganache had sunk about 1/4". Where did it go? It soaked into the top of the cake! That made the already rich and moist cake even richer and moister. Yum. We had a second piece each for breakfast before we hopped on a plane and came home. Our flight was delayed by over an hour, so I'm glad we had a filling breakfast.

Last night, for today's celebration, I made a New York Style Cheesecake, with strawberry topping. This was a recipe from school; the full recipe makes two 10" cakes and so I cut the recipe into 1/3 so I could make one 8" cake. (18 ounces of cream cheese, 3 eggs, a little sugar and flour, and some cream.) The batter was even run through a sieve to get out all the lumps, that's how much of a labor of love this was! It chilled overnight and today was served with the strawberry pie filling as a topping. The only other change I made was that the crust was chocolate wafer cookies crumbs rather than graham crackers.

And, with that, I think the youngerchild has been properly ushered into teenager-dom.