March: The Month of Birthdays

March is a pretty fun month, if I do say so myself. The weather is officially getting warmer, and the world is once again a happy, not dead wintry place. We have my birthday, my husband's birthday, Easter, St. Patrick's day, and probably a few more excuses to eat as many treats as possible. I just really love March! Last year, our birthday cakes were both disasters. Since last year, I've found my absolute favorite chocolate cake recipe, and these cakes were much better because of it!

My cake was an almond joy cake, inspired by these beautiful cupcakes by Confessions of a Cookbook Queen. If I had it to do again, I might just make her exact cupcakes, complete with the gigantic dollop of almond frosting. I didn't want to make a huge cake, since it was just the two of us (and we'd have more cake in just two weeks for my husband's birthday!), so I just made one layer, which the almond frosting and chocolate ganache. I thought it was very very good- but again, I'd have at least twice as much almond frosting next time!

I've been showing everyone I know the recipe I used for my husband's birthday cake- the recipe is for peanut butter cup brownie cake from Sprinkle Bakes. Even just looking at her pictures of that amazing cake make me want to make it again! And we still have half of ours left. :) I didn't make the brownie layers (because I'm a wimp and didn't want to use 5 eggs!) and so I made two layers of my very favorite cake recipe and one layer of the peanut butter filling. I had to adjust the chocolate frosting quite a bit- when I followed the original recipe, it was not very sweet, and very very dark. So I made it a light, whippy frosting instead, and I loved it all! It was actually very easy to make the peanut butter layer, and the whole cake stayed together, so I'd call it a birthday success!