Birthday Festivities

30 isn't so bad... but turning 30 in rural Tanzania where there are only a handful of westerners and little to no access to shopping?  Now that takes a little getting used to!  Tim and Micaiah did a good job, though, and I am happy to say that I felt properly celebrated and sufficiently embarrassed, and that's the point of a birthday, right? :)

An overview of my day...

Sleeping in!  Yay for an extra hour of sleep!  Tim had already asked what I'd want for breakfast, so we planned ahead for a pineapple-banana-kefir shake topped with my homemade peanut butter granola.  Yum! 

Leisurely morning.  The power went off shortly after Tim made the aforementioned shake, so that slows things down a bit.  Normally our day consists of a full morning of school with some activities carrying over into the afternoon.  Instead, I did about an hour of school with Micaiah and let the non-essentials go for the day.  I also enjoyed a leisurely, hot bath (once the power returned and we were able to use the hot water kettle!).  It sounds mundane, but since we normally take cold showers in the mornings, I assure you that this was quite a treat!

Messages, Messages, Messages.  I'm almost entirely certain that Tim did a bit of work to remind people that it was my birthday and urge friends to post thoughtful, encouraging messages to me.  I got more than a hundred emails and messages on facebook!  Not only that, but many of them were exceptionally meaningful and heartfelt-- I appreciated all who took the time to give me the gift of encouragement on my big day!

Gifts.  Somewhere between the homeschooling and bathing and breakfasting (that's a word, right?), I got gifts.  Micaiah and Tim gave me a metal stand to hang some of my mugs on (yay!), some pringles, some chocolate, and-- the best surprise-- an episode of CHOPPED!!  It's my favorite tv show, and a completely surprise gift.  I'd never have imagined that the internet would have been good enough to download something like this through i-tunes.  Oh, and I may be forgetting two of my favorite gifts-- Micaiah picked out a beautiful bouquet of silk flowers (!) and the shop-owner of our favorite shop in town gave me a musical, light-up birthday card!  It was so sweet!  Nothing like a bit of Tanzanian flare to spice up a birthday. :)  Don't worry, pictures are below...

Food.  Can't be a birthday without more good food!  I already mentioned the shake and granola for breakfast.  For lunch we had beans and rice with our workers and talked about birthday traditions here in Tanzania (which are minimal).  I had made my cake the day before-- a strawberry (read: pink! yuck!) box cake that my friend Jamie gave me, topped with a delicious almond buttercream icing (with REAL butter!) and garnished with chopped dried cherries that I brought all the way from the US.  It was delicious!  Since I'm still not eating a lot of sugar or flour, I've had to limit myself to one piece a day, but it was a nice splurge.  Yesterday I had had enough and cut the remainder into slices and stuck it in the freezer.  That way I can spread out the treat and not go into a sugar coma. :) 

Food (continued).  For dinner I made pizza.  Before you go feeling sorry for me that I had to cook my own birthday meal, remember that I actually like to cook.  And I had saved a few very special things for my birthday meal, including our last package of pepperoni and some mozzarella cheese I managed to find in town!  So I made pizza (pepperoni, onion, ground beef) and garlic breadsticks. 

And now for some pictures:

Can you believe this mosquito?  This is MY pink cake thank you very much!  :)

 The finished product.  I thought after the fact that I should have added some dark chocolate chunks in with the chopped dried cherries... that would have been yummy!

 Cooking up a big birthday dinner. 

The dinner-- two pizzas (I'm not going to waste precious mozzarella on Tim, who doesn't even like it!)

 This card was amazing!  It had an instrumental rendition of the "happy birthday" song and lit up every time I opened it..... Micaiah may have enjoyed it more than I did!  The roses on the front (not pictured) were like this but 3D. :)

This is the lovely (!) bouquet of silk flowers that Micaiah spotted in town and decided I MUST have as part of my birthday present. :) 

Me with my birthday cake.


Quote of the day: "Thank you, Jeana, for making your birthday so special for me!" --Tim. :)

Thanks to all who helped make my 30th birthday special for me, too! 

-JLR

Apple Bundt Cake

Last year for Christmas I received a silicone bundt cake pan as a gift. When we return to Tanzania, I'm hoping to have a full set of silicone cake and cupcake pans because they are so light-weight compared to metal pans! I also love the way you can bend them to loosen the cake, and need little to no oil/shortening to keep cake from sticking. I've even been using a silicone baking mat that helps cookies cook evenly without getting stuck! But enough with my fascination with silicone bakeware... :)

I quickly realized that I didn't have many recipes to use in my new bundt cake pan since the idea of making bundt cakes has always been more of a nice idea than a practicality. I've tried a few and just the other day ran across this one from Martha Stewart.com and made it for our small group last night. It was so yummy! Sorry, I have no pics-- it was mostly gone before I even thought of it! I did make one change-- I added a small amount of cinnamon to the glaze. I had been planning to just do a dusting of powdered sugar, but then realized that I had done this too soon (the cake was still warm) and so the appearance was not what I wanted. Hence the cinnamon glaze.

Anyone have other bundt cake recipes that I could try?? Here are a few ideas I'm currently searching for... lemon poppyseed bundt cake, traditional coffee cake, sour cream coffee cake, chocolate cake, and pound cake. Let me know if you have any ideas!

-JLR

M's Bday Cakes #2 and #3

These pictures have been such a long time in coming! I finally downloaded the pics to my computer, so a blog post seemed appropriate. Pics from Micaiah's first cake this year can be found here.

Her second cake was for Micaiah's actual birthday. Tim's parents were visiting at the time and his mom has some dietary restrictions. This cake worked perfectly! The batter was simply 2 boxes cake mix, 2 cans of sprite zero and food coloring. The icing was cool whip (the fat-free, non-dairy kind) plus 2 packages of pudding mix. Super easy! Well, at least until the part where you divide it up and put it all together!

The process...
The birthday girl...

The inside rainbow swirl effect...
And for being a diet cake, it was really quite yummy!

Micaiah's third cake of this birthday season (gah!) was the fanciest. The cakes themselves were simple white and simple chocolate, but the decorating was what made it a beast of a cake. In keeping with the princess party theme, I had great ambitions for a castle cake. It wouldn't have been possible without the Wilton Castle Cake set, which included plastic towers, windows, doors, and directions for how to do this. I was also able to do some ahead of time, which helped a ton. Here's what we ended up with:

Adding the towers I had decorated the night before. (I hadn't thought to get the camera out before this!)
The final product and details...



Micaiah blowing out the candles at her party...
The cake tasted great and was so pretty. The only problem is that I wish I'd have had a way to anchor the turrets better. Throughout the party I kept hearing small crashes only to find that one or more of the turrets had fallen and needed some rigging.

After last year I was excited to 'raise the bar' since I knew I'd have more access to cake decorating resources (pans, consistent electricity, ingredients, etc.). After surviving this year I've made a commitment to 'lower the bar' for next year for my own sanity. :)

-JLR

M's Bday Cake #1

Birthday cakes have become one of my favorite things! I love making cakes and even more than that, I love the excitement and appreciation from Micaiah, my special birthday girl! This year we plan to have lots of guests in March to help us celebrate her 5th birthday... Nana and Aunt Jaime came this past week, Grandma and Grandpa Roth are coming next week, and the week after we'll do a friends party. I got this great idea for a multi-layer rainbow cake from a seminar at church on party planning. The facilitator forwarded lots of info, and I also found another blog online with some additional info.

Anyway, here are some pics from my first cake adventure of the birthday season!

(minus the purple batter, which was already in the oven!)
I told Micaiah that I lost the colors... she was bummed. :) This cake was so massive that the cake cover wouldn't fit!
The happy birthday girl with the first slice.
The insides of the cake.
Oh, and with only one cake pan (which I would never again attempt!), I could not have accomplished this task without Jaime to keep me company. Thanks!

-JLR