Happy Anniversary, Dinner is Served!

Last week I hit my 3-year anniversary with both the blog and Brian! Can you believe it? I can’t. I seriously can’t. I don’t know the last time I committed to something this long that wasn’t a loveless, soul-sucking relationship completely lacking intimacy, honesty and anything remotely resembling a fit physique (that includes me. I never thought about a gym, let alone join one).

Ah, good times!

Anyway, three frickin’ years! Color me shocked.

To commemorate 3 years, I did almost precisely what I did for my two-year anniversary—hang out with Todd and Leah and bake a cake.

I looked back at some posts and realized that it probably seems like all I do is hang out at thir place. That’s totally not true.  Although this is their welcome sign at their apartment:

The likeness is uncanny, amiright?

The only thing we’re missing is Marty the dog.

On Sunday they threw an Oscar Party. Complete with champagne and an Oscar Meyer Wiener Hot Dog Bar complete with Skyline chili and cheese.

It was perfect. Totally hit the spot.

And I brought dessert. I went with a ‘golden’ theme for the evening and selected recipes from Better Homes & Gardens Pies and Cakes. This was my goal, the Yellow Cake Deluxe:

I gathered all of my ingredients. I thought that this would be a breeze. Of course, I messed up in a huge way in the first step: I counted sugar as a dry ingredient and threw it in with the flour and stuff instead of creaming it with the butter and the eggs.

I could see how mixing the sugar with the butter initially would be a good thing,  but I decided to forge ahead and just mix in the dry ingredients (including sugar) and the milk!

The resulting batter was very, very thick. And lumpy. Just lumps of butter. So I mixed it longer to try to smooth it out. It really didn’t do the trick.

And then poured it into the pans. And baked it for 35 minutes. Cooled, yadda yadda yadda. I cut the cakes so that they were level and made the lemon filling—which was surprisingly thick and gelatinous. But delish. Totally reminded me of high school-cafeteria lemon fluff.

Aside from the lemon filling, there wasn’t anything golden about my cake. It was supposed to be a yellow cake, but it was white. I thought that the butter frosting would have a golden-hue, but no. So I added food coloring to the frosting; but the end result was more circus-peanut than baby chick. And my sweetened coconut looked more like shredded cheddar.

Here’s my Golden Cake Deluxe with Golden Butter Frosting:

My golden statuette-themed cake looked more like an ode to the Cheeseheads.

But how did it taste???

Not bad. Not bad at all. And better than I thought considering the misstep I made with not mixing the sugar with the butter. The cake itself was much like an angel cake. What a surprise considering how viscous the cake batter was. And the frosting–although I think I should have added more powdered sugar to stiffen it up, it was tasty. And I already said how good that lemon fluff filling was.

This was a super-surprise—although none of the Oscar wins were. What was the closest one—Spike Jonez’s win for best original screenplay?

The other surprise? Monday snow day! YES. I know that a lot of people hate the snow, but I don’t mind it. And I love the fact that there is a propensity to cancel school in Maryland at the mere forecast of accumulation. Love it! As the Oscars went on, one by one we all received notifications that we didn’t have to go to work the next day. We were freaking out like little kids.

We even did our own Oscars selfie, which, sadly, did not get retweeted 2 million times:

But totally close, right?

OK, not. Fucking pretty people. Kevin Spacey totally wins that picture, though.

So, if you had one, how did you spend your snow day? I spent my snow day napping, catching up on The Crazy Ones starring Robin Williams, Buffy, and BOB BENSON (seriously, can someone get me his number?) and I watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother (die already, show. I want to kick Ted Mosby in the teeth). I also got sucked into a block of season 1 Sex and the City, and I made a Tom Collins. Because I do love a good snow day cocktail. I will share that soon.

Anyway, happy anniversary to me.  This project continues to be such a blast. Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting and sharing. This has become so much more than I ever thought it would. It’s really turned into something that defines me as a person: I am the weird girl that always shows up at parties with a cheese ball or a Jell-O mold because she has a food blog.

There are worse things to be.

Cheers!

OH! I also want to thank my brother and his fiancee (again) for buying me the new camera. It has made SUCH a difference!