25th Birthday Recap
Another year older! I had a lovely birthday and felt very loved by so many wonderful people :)
I work up at 5.30am which I am confused by as Saturday had been super full on (I left home at 6.45am and didn't get home until 9.45pm) and I was exhausted, but my body clock had other ideas.
As is our family tradition everyone sang Happy Birthday to me and I blew out candles in a bowl of chocolates.
I then opened gifts, I received a Pandora hedgehog bead from Megan, a Pandora mushroom/frog bead and a new jewellery box from my parents, Shaun Tan's (my favourite illustrator/artist) latest book from Jocelyn and an apron and oven mitt set from some family friends.
I had decided to make the Billionaires Cookie Dough Cake from the Cookies and Cups cookbook for
my birthday this required a lot of preparation ahead of time, especially as I was out all day Saturday. The cake is three layers of cake layered with cookie dough and caramel sauce, covered in swiss meringue buttercream, before being topped with chocolate ganache and shortbread crumbs. I prepared everything ahead of time in the following order:
So on the Sunday morning I started assembling my birthday cake, putting cookie dough and caramel
sauce between the cake layers before putting it in the fridge to set before I iced it. I also made the ganache so it would be cool enough to pour over the cake after I had iced it.
I decided to watch the new Netflix movie Tall Girl and messaged some friends who live interstate.
I finished the cake (leaving it to set in the fridge for 10 minutes between the icing and ganache stages) and returned it to the fridge to set until I needed it. I was really happy in that there were no major disasters and the cake was in one piece!
We then had lunch and then started to set up for the celebrations.
A few weeks prior I had put out a Facebook event inviting a group of friends over to help me eat the cake, I even called the event "An Excuse to Eat Cake". I wanted it to be low key and casual, just some friends hanging out, eating cake and enjoying each others company which it was. Along with the cake we served cheese/crackers/dip, some strawberries, bowls lollies and chocolate and mum did some baking.
We did cake once most people had arrived and then just snacked the rest of the time, some friends turned up later so we would serve them up some cake and they would just join in the conversations. Some people played Bannagrams which took a communist turn at one point (not my words) and there was some discussion about what counted as a word and what didn't. It was a really nice afternoon and it was great catching up with friends and I felt so loved by the end of the day, I couldn't have thought of any other way I would rather celebrate turning 25.
I work up at 5.30am which I am confused by as Saturday had been super full on (I left home at 6.45am and didn't get home until 9.45pm) and I was exhausted, but my body clock had other ideas.
As is our family tradition everyone sang Happy Birthday to me and I blew out candles in a bowl of chocolates.
I then opened gifts, I received a Pandora hedgehog bead from Megan, a Pandora mushroom/frog bead and a new jewellery box from my parents, Shaun Tan's (my favourite illustrator/artist) latest book from Jocelyn and an apron and oven mitt set from some family friends.
I had decided to make the Billionaires Cookie Dough Cake from the Cookies and Cups cookbook for
- Sunday (1 week before) - I made the caramel sauce and stored in the refrigerator.
- Tuesday - made the 3 cake layers and froze them
- Friday - made the cookie dough, swiss meringue buttercream and shortbread crumbs and stored them in the fridge minus the shortbread crumbs which I stored in a ziplock bag in the cupboard.
- Saturday night - took the cakes out of the freezer and placed the swiss meringue buttercream out on the bench to bring to room temperature.
So on the Sunday morning I started assembling my birthday cake, putting cookie dough and caramel sauce between the cake layers before putting it in the fridge to set before I iced it. I also made the ganache so it would be cool enough to pour over the cake after I had iced it.
I decided to watch the new Netflix movie Tall Girl and messaged some friends who live interstate.
I finished the cake (leaving it to set in the fridge for 10 minutes between the icing and ganache stages) and returned it to the fridge to set until I needed it. I was really happy in that there were no major disasters and the cake was in one piece!
We then had lunch and then started to set up for the celebrations.
A few weeks prior I had put out a Facebook event inviting a group of friends over to help me eat the cake, I even called the event "An Excuse to Eat Cake". I wanted it to be low key and casual, just some friends hanging out, eating cake and enjoying each others company which it was. Along with the cake we served cheese/crackers/dip, some strawberries, bowls lollies and chocolate and mum did some baking.
We did cake once most people had arrived and then just snacked the rest of the time, some friends turned up later so we would serve them up some cake and they would just join in the conversations. Some people played Bannagrams which took a communist turn at one point (not my words) and there was some discussion about what counted as a word and what didn't. It was a really nice afternoon and it was great catching up with friends and I felt so loved by the end of the day, I couldn't have thought of any other way I would rather celebrate turning 25.
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