Birthday Baking

Two very special people in my life celebrated birthdays during the month of May, my mom and my husband, John. And birthday celebrations call for baking!! For my mom, I was excited to try out my new Wilton giant cupcake pan. To decorate, I decided to do something of a tribute to all my mom's hardwork on our wilton character cakes when we were growing up (I recall strawberry shortcake, cookie monster, He-man for my brother, among others), using the star tip, #21. The cake was hazelnut and filled a hazelnut chocolate mousse, topped with buttercream. I think from this distance the cake looks all right...

But up close it was just a big old mess! (I am hearing Cher say this from Clueless) From the start, there were problems. The cupcake pan doesn't really bake evenly and I didn't have the patience to bake the two halves separately. And then there were multiple decorating disasters.... a basketweave that refused to adhere to the cake, a top border that had to be completely removed, and by that time, I was just too flustered to do my drop stars very neatly. I nicknamed this "a cake only my mom could love".
Taking a break from birthday cakes, for John's birthday I made a strawberry rhubarb galette from a Millenium recipe (the recipe is online), one of John's favorite fruit combinations. The walnut pastry crust turned out great, and it was a pretty fancy little dessert that required minimum effort, especially from a Millenium cookbook (this is the first time I have made anything from it!). Next time, I would add about half the fresh ginger the recipe called for in the fruit filling, it was a bit overpowering.
And finally, an actual meal (it seems like real food always ends up at the end of my posts lately?!), the orange chipotle glazed tofu from the June issue of Vegetarian Times. Very tasty and so simple! This was also a recipe that John and I could agree on since I like sweet sauces and he likes spicy ones, and this dish was a little of both.
I finally got my new blog banner up after about six months of procrastinating! I went for a Texas theme that I'm sure makes my mom proud.