Tomorrow our daughter turns 9. Wow! Birthdays are a big deal in our house, much bigger than Christmas (we don't do much in the way of gifts at Christmas for example). One way that I like to mark the day is to ask the birthday person what they would like to eat. Tomorrow's menu will be Lasagna and vanilla sponge cake with chocolate icing. (Our kids haven't figured out that they could ask to go to a restaurant yet but hey, I'm not knocking it!)

I found a new cake recipe to try. Looks good and promises to be the best birthday cake (once again, Smitten kitchen is my current, ultimate fave!).

I will be making my own icing (ie. my own recipe) which I am adding here. Warning, remember the not measuring thing from the previous post? Well, here's the proof:

Chocolate icing:

about 2 cups of icing sugar

about 3/4 of a cup of cocoa (maybe more)

between 1/4 and a 1/2 cup of room temp. butter (unsalted)

between 1/2 and 1 1/4 (yeah, that's right...) cream (milk in a pinch) or sour cream

maybe a touch of vanilla or splash of coffee or liquor of choice - to taste.

Squish butter until the lumps are gone. Sift icing sugar and cocoa into the butter bowl. Slowly (by about 1/2 cup portions) add in cream and mix after each addition until you get the icing consistency that you want.

Ok, so good luck with that one. I don't have a mixer of any kind (stand or hand!) and although I know it makes me one of a dying breed (or too cheap to cough up the dough for a stand-mixer), I'm doing it all by hand. It's actually a good work-out.

The cake looks fantastic. I think that this is the first time that I've used actual Buttermilk (rather than using reg. milk and adding vinegar to sour and thicken it). The proof will be in the pudding when we taste it tomorrow...