T Stands for March Birthdays

 Hi everyone.

 T Day has rolled around again, and today I am going to share some celebration baking from the first week of March. This week I also have a  bit of a longish post.

There were 2 birthdays in my house that week. The first one was Pete's 7th birthday. We don't know exactly when he was born as he is a rescue dog, but do have an approximate date as he was still a puppy when my daughter adopted him. She picked March 1 as his big day, so that's his birthday.

I had recently picked up this box of make your own dog biscuits at Trader Joe's, and Pete's birthday sounded like a good day to make both dogs a treat.

I decided to use my star set of cookie cutters since Pete was the star of the day. Just before I baked them, I put a dab of peanut butter on the top of each cookie as well as a few colorful sprinkles.

They were a hit. And since a drink is required for T, let me share the dog's drink with you.

Smile. (The water is not really green, just the shadow off my kitchen cabinets that are green.)

The second birthday required a bit more of a celebration cake, as it was my birthday. cake My husband volunteered to buy me a cake, but I thought it would be a good time to check another box off my baking bucket list for 2021.

I didn't have this cake on my birthday, but instead we celebrated over the weekend after my birthday, when my daughter came home for an overnight visit.

I wanted to make a vertical layer cake. In this kind of cake (if you aren't sure what I mean), the layers, when the cake is cut, go up and down, instead of the standard horizontal way.

To make this cake you make a jelly roll/Swiss roll style sponge. Then you roll the layers of the cake around each other, standing the who thing on end.

You can see on the right the inner layer (standing upright), and this one of the cutting board will be wrapped around the standing on.

My cake was a chocolate sponge, and I filled it with whipped cream. That's what you see gobbed onto the layer above.

Here's the finished roll before I trimmed it. Then I frosted it.

I don't like super sweet frosting so I made a coffee flavored Swiss meringue buttercream. All butter, not much in proportion of sugar.  I put on some chocolate sprinkles. I was going to pipe a few swirls, especially along the bottom, but I since I needed to make more frosting, I decided this was probably decorated enough. Good thing too.

My daughter decided I needed a candle for every year. 

Lighting them took a awhile and caused a huge blaze.

My husband didn't think I could blow them all out, but it was easy-peasy.  Ha-ha to him.

And after we pulled out the candles, the cake looked like someone was using it for archery practice.

My layers didn't end up quite straight and you can see where a wrap ended,  but it didn't matter. The cake was delicious. Good thing my daughter took half of it home with her too. 

I just hope this year in my life won't be as challenging as the last year was. I'm still waiting to go out to dinner to celebrate last year's BIG birthday, which didn't happen because right after my birthday I got really sick for 5 days and then Corinna (covid) hit and life came to a screeching standstill.  I'm not complaining though because at least I didn't catch covid.

Don't forget to stop by   Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog  where we share our drinks. You can see my glass of milk  and my daughter's water bottle in  one of the lighted cake photos. You can also see my empty dinner wine glass in the photo where my daughter is lighting the candles.

Thanks for visiting, and I hope you have a happy T day too.