Foto Friday: belated documentation of birthday awesomeness 16 September 2011 9:20 am
Posted by Tracy in : convenience,dessert,family,fun,life,photos,pictures,recipes,summer , trackbackMy super-awesome 32nd birthday, let me show you it!
Firstly, you may have heard about the hurricane that was due in town that day? I know, it ended up getting downgraded to a tropical storm, but I think on the whole New York City did a good job of responding to this weather event, unlike during Snowpocalypse 2010 (Snowmageddon? I don’t remember what it was called). In any case, the impending storm doom that ended up flooding Vermont (?!) precluded a party, since everybody was supposed to be staying indoors all day (even if it did end up clear and actually kind of lovely). Meanwhile, there was the problem of avoiding caffeine withdrawal headaches in the event of power outages….
Cold-brew coffee to the rescue!
Yay cold brew! Also yay nifty double-walled glasses Peter got for his birthday (thanks Lois!)
If I had known how fun and easy cold-brewing coffee is, I would have started doing it years ago, so it’s probably a good thing I didn’t find out until last month because my caffeine addiction is bad enough already, thanks. Anyway, I use a ratio of about 1/3 cup ground coffee into 1 1/2 cups of water, steep 6-8 hours or overnight at room temperature, then strain, dilute with water if necessary, and further adulterate to taste with simple syrup and half-and-half or whole milk. The results are fabulous — I get to taste the beans in a whole new way (but one that tastes ALL WRONG heated up in the microwave, it turns out… fascinating). So that’s pretty great.
Also pretty great? Ice cream cake. I know, haters gonna hate, but with a birthday in late August, I have long been a big fan of the ice cream cake, and somehow had not yet made one despite having owned an ice cream machine for several years… more the fools we! But for my birthday, we fixed that problem, with brownies sandwiched between two layers of homemade ice cream (straight up vanilla on top, with a base of chocolate that turned out super-mocha-riffic because I misread the recipe and used a whole can of sweetened condensed milk for the base, added extra instant coffee powder to compensate, and ran out of chocolate and whipped cream… it’s complicated, ok?) Then Peter made cream cheese frosting to cover the whole thing with extra awesomeness… mmm. In case you were wondering, yes, the brownies froze super-solid and made the leftover cake way hard to cut and eat, but no less delicious, oh no. Here are some pictures of the cake assembly!
Base layer:
Brownies:
Cutting brownies to cake size:
Top with vanilla:
Frosting:
Eating!
It was a wonderful birthday, and I’m really glad we didn’t lose power because eating that whole cake instead of letting it melt… that might’ve killed us.
