things yummy and pretty

It was my birthday last week, and while it should probably have been an occasion to contemplate my new wisdom and take resolutions to stop wearing flip-flops and watching Gossip Girl, it was instead mostly an occasion to eat. Notably, this cake.

(Photos from Andrea)

Jeff claims that he doesn't bake, but when he does it's perfect. I'm not a good baker because I never really believe that instructions have to be followed. Jeff, on the other hand, opens up The Best Recipe Cookbook, carefully reads all their (*cough*fascist*cough*) instructions, and dutifully treks to the store to buy cake flour, measures it out by weight, and bakes the layers one by one in the toaster oven (because our real oven has, as far as I can tell, no temperature control at all). It really was the best cake I've ever eaten.

Complementarily, my other present from Jeff was an ice-cream maker. It's actually labeled an "Automatic Frozen Yogurt-Ice Cream & Sorbet Maker"--with the ice cream sandwiched between frozen yogurt and sorbet, as though to emphasize the potential healthfulness of your homemade frozen treats. Jeff and I, however, seem not to be the target demographic, because we went right ahead and mixed up 5 egg yolks (leftover from the cake) with an unspeakable amount of heavy cream, some sour cream, and comparatively wee portions of milk, sugar, and strawberries.



What I learned from food bloggers: take pictures that are mostly plate. But...look at that chip. I'll never really be a food blogger.

Also because: here's what my bowl of ice cream really looks like:



Mmmmm. It's terrific ice cream. The sour cream and strawberry variety is still Jeff's clear favorite, though I've also tried out spicy chocolate, chocolate chip, apricot sorbet, and mango sorbet. They've all been really excellent, too (among our friends who have tried them out, the apricot has been the champion). Another thing I learned from food bloggers was that I needed this book, which I highly recommend. They have it at the Harold Washington library (though I have it checked out right now, obv.).

The non-eating component of my birthday involved pretty things: earrings from Laurel


flowers from Jenny, Laurel, and Julia


and an ikebana pot from Julia (the brown one in back).


I'm getting quite a collection of these things. I love them. They're the poor woman's vase: they make flowers of small numbers or inferior quality look great. Which means that when your bouquet starts to get droopy, you can split it up into an arrangement like the one above.


You can also take pictures of the flowers. Jeff tells me this is a "wicked girly" thing to do.

But they were really pretty flowers! A few of them are still even vase-worthy.


Well, onto those older-and-wiser resolutions now. If only I knew where to start...