Now that i have a phone-pc connection, I can retroactively talk about foods I've eaten. Please, don't fall off the edge of your seats.
First up is MY birthday cake, which turned out just okay. I've realized that storing cakes in the fridge really takes something out of them, rather than having them fresh from the oven. Again, shocker. Still, it was very pretty and very "American" as a non-American friend put it. It was inspired by birthday cakes I had as a child.


The raspberry curd is from this recipe. I didn't mix it with whipped cream as suggested, although that probably wouldn't have been a bad idea. The frosting is here, which was my attempt to not have a butter-based frosting but instead...whipped cream. N.B., let the cream cheese be completely softened before mixing it into the whipped cream. If you don't, you get...large cream cheese chunks. So I'm not sure I would make this frosting again even though it probably didn't turn out well because of my own impatience. Plus, it was really rich (duh) and made me feel sort of ill. Finally, the cake is from the old go-to Baker's Illustrated. The cake was very light and fluffy out of the oven. Weighing it down with cream cheese and drying it out in the fridge did not help it much.

In non-birthday related news, I made a blueberry buttermilk tart as I had some extra buttermilk leftover from that chocolate cake posted below. I also chucked in some frozen raspberries I had languishing. Come to think of it, I think I did make this for a friend's birthday a few years ago. The crust is slightly burnt, I should have kept it wrapped in foil. It's very hard to put foil on mid-way through the baking process and leads to burnt fingers and smoking pieces of dough on the oven floor.