Birthday Wishes

This past weekend we celebrated my brother's and mom's birthdays. I offered to have their birthday lunch on Sunday and made one of our favorite Ina Garten dishes along with a new cake recipe that I have been wanting to try.

I made the Parmesan chicken recipe from Ina's Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook. Ina suggests that you add mixed greens on top with a Lemon Vinaigrette dressing. I love this recipe because it's so simple yet filling.

For dessert, my mom and brother requested a chocolate cake and I had been dying to try a new recipe saw in the Feb. issue of Country Living. I tried the Deep Dark Chocolate Cake and it was amazing! It's your typical chocolate cake, very dense and moist and the surprise is a layer of raspberry buttercream between the layers. The outer chocolate buttercream has 2 cups of marshmallow cream and makes it very rich and fluffy.


The cake was a hit and I finally got to use my new cake stand that I recently purchased on sale from Williams-Sonoma.