Amelia: 172 weeks & Margot: 74 weeks*
We decided to celebrate our anniversary a little different this year. Instead of making about us and our marriage, we included the girls and made it a celebration of the start of our family. Our family’s birthday, if you will. And when you celebrate a birthday, you need birthday cake. Raspberry birthday cake with white chocolate cream cheese frosting. Obviously.
We put seven candles on it, sang Happy Birthday to our family, and the girls blew them out. It was pretty cute, even if I wasn’t able to get a decent photo of them doing it.
I tried to include a little of everyone’s favorites: raspberries for David, pink for Mila, amazing frosting for me, and, well, cake in general for Margot. Girl loves her some cake.
Like mother like daughter. And father. And sister, for that matter.
It was a fun and fairly easy way for us to share a special day with our girls, talk about our wedding day with them, and celebrate our little family together. Plus there was lots of leftover cake to munch on over the weekend. New favorite tradition? I think so!
Raspberry Cake with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
Raspberry Cake
(adapted from Honest Cooking)
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
4 eggs, room temperature
1 small package (12 oz, I believe) frozen raspberries, thawed
3 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 small package (3 oz) raspberry gelatin
3/4 cup buttermilk
Preheat oven to 350. Butter and flour two 8″ cake rounds.
Pour thawed raspberries into a small bowl. Using a spoon, press out most of the juice over the sink. Continue to press, stir, and shop until you have a thick pulpy mixture.
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Stir in raspberry pulp with a wooden spoon.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the remaining dry ingredients. Fold half of this mixture into the wet ingredients. Add buttermilk and stir until just combined, then fold in the remaining dry ingredient mixture. (Your batter will look broken, rather than smooth, because of the raspberries.)
Allow batter to rest for 15 minutes. Then pour into prepared pans and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
(adapted slightly from Grandmother’s Kitchen)
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 8 oz package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, at room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Melt chocolate chips in microwave, stopping every 10 seconds to stir. Allow to cool slightly. Beat together cream cheese and butter. Beat in white chocolate. Slowly add powdered sugar, beating on low, until smooth. Add vanilla and beat again until fully combined.
Assembly: I highly recommend doing a crumb coat before completely frosting this cake, as it will seal in all the red crumbs and leave your white frosting pristine. You can find a good video tutorial for crumb coats here.
Garnish your cake with fresh raspberries (or sprinkles, if you have a child like Mila who insists on eating sprinkles with everything). Slice and serve. Stores well in the refrigerator for up to five days.
*Technically I’m a week behind and today they’re 173 and 75
weeks respectively. Dang broken computer. It’s fixed now, though!
Huzzah! Back to online life as usual!
[…] was our family’s birthday (aka our 8th wedding anniversary) and I spent the day insta-spamming everyone with pictures of me […]