The One With a Birthday and Valentine's Day

I made a variation of this cake for Jason for his birthday. I didn't want to make the whole cake cuz then we'd eat it all and I'm glad I didn't because the icing was all wrong. Instead I filled 8-7oz ramekins and then cut each in half to layer the frosting. Then I threw the rest of the batter away (I would have halfed the recipe but that never works quite right). It had a buttercream icing recipe so I thought it be really good. It calls for 2 sticks of butter (wow!) and a bunch of egg yolks. But then it said for this cake you could take out the yolks (which I'm all over because I avoid yolks whenever possible) and to add in a tbsp of water. Well, it tasted funny. So Monday night I made different frosting for the leftover cake. I used my basic recipe and it was much better.

So someone brought up something about Valentine's gifts for teachers. I was all set to not do one, as I don't really do teacher gifts. But then Gigi told me about her sanitizer gift. Well, that was Wednesday and Zach's "friendship" party was on Thursday. I didn't want to go to the store for sanitizer and I didn't have a new one laying around. But I did have a small Kleenex box. Zach is all over cutting shapes and glueing and such. So we made a little gift for his teacher. It was kind of cute. (Star Wars is totally Valentiney.) Zach secretly made me one as well and gave it to me Saturday morning. He glued a heart on a bag of M&Ms he found and gave those to Jason. He didn't even mention that he didn't get a gift from us. He was worried that Jason and I forgot to get eachother something. Oh, and Zach has decided that his named is spelled Zack, with a K. Because there is no "huh" sound in Zach, just "kuh."

On Sunday I decided to make some little apple pie tarts. I was going to make them on Valentine's day but we still had ice cream left over from Friday night. My crust was a little dry but I was too lazy to start over again (which I normally do because I want a perfect crust.) I used my normal crust and apple filling recipe but cut the apples into little pieces. They made for a quick little treat.