half birthdays and half done cakes

Today is E's half birthday, and so we'll be celebrating tonight with a meal of her choosing and a dessert of her choosing.  If it was really her choosing she'd probably skip the meal entirely and just have the dessert.  A few weeks ago she pulled out the cookbooks to look for just the right recipe, and she landed on the S'more Cake from the new Smitten Kitchen Cookbook (the bottom right hand image below).  I'm slowly working my way through the book, and have loved everything we've tried so far.  We even crafted up some Mardi Gras rice krispie treats (with purple, yellow and green colored sugar on top) this weekend, fancying them up a bit by first browning the butter and then adding a bit of salt.  (Thanks, Deb, for that one.)

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I don't know that the S'more Cake is really a Monday night sort of cake, particularly not when I also have a small cookie order and some Valentine cookies to do this week as well.  But I'm always game for the challenge, and so last night I made the first two components:  a graham cracker cake (two layers) with a thick milk chocolate icing in the middle.  Tonight we'll eat dinner and whip up the marshmallow icing, pipe it out onto the cake and then break out the blow torch.  I could have done that last part last night, but it was late, and I wasn't sure how well it would hold up until tonight.  And besides, I think the marshmallow roasting is always the best part of the whole s'more experience anyway.

Here's hoping for a "third time's a charm" experience with the marshmallows.  My first round a few years back was a disaster, and the second round was only slightly better.  

But I do remember how fun (and slightly dangerous) it was torching those things, so we should be able to skip the nine and a half candles tonight and just blow out the whole darn cake.  Wish us luck.