My mother's birthday story

Yesterday it was my mother's birthday, so I concocted a birthday cake for her that turned into a one-way guilt trip to heaven.
You see, the story goes like this:

I started out making a simple dark chocolate cake from the Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake recipe on the back of the box.

When I took it out of the oven, I couldn't resist having the tiniest sample.
It tasted rich, delicious, chocolatey, and not too sweet. Bafflingly, however, it stuck to my well-greased pan though the cake itself wasn't burnt at all, and when I tried to get it out, it crumbled. How sad it was, that all my efforts for my wonderful mother's birthday cake were seemingly wasted, as I had no more time to bake another cake.

Not to fear; I wasn't born a professor's daughter for nothing! I quickly decided that the heavenly mountain of crumbled cake could still be decorated quite appealingly. After all, cake must not be wasted. So I drizzled it with the chocolate frosting I had previously prepared, and then iced it with dollops and swirls of vanilla buttercream icing. I then added some extra color and seasonal flavor with organic cranberries that happened to be on hand.

Voila! Disaster averted, and not to mention my dad's diet plans were ruined. 

We then went out for dinner in the city at Jax Cafe, which is famous for their pork chops and steak. However, since the lighting was too dim to do justice for their tender and juicy steak, I just quickly snapped a few pictures of our appetizers to commemorate the special evening as well as my adolescent immaturity.(I apologize for the grainy shots; couldn't fit a bulky camera into my purse so these were taken with my ipod.)



Check out my artistic skills as I attempt to give Simba a makeover




Bread basket! The raisin bread was really nice, a perfect balance of fresh, doughy, whole wheat bread and sweet dried fruit




Really nicely made fresh pita bread and different types of hummus dips.
The orange dip was definitely my fave, with what I swear was a note of cumin and a bit of spiciness from the paprika, as compared to the more generic and slightly salty regular hummus dip.

Moment later, as my famished family dug in...


...

Everyone in my family except for the (more prudent) me was full before the main course!

Tomato Basil soup. Very seasonal and fresh, but a bit too salty.

Quick random excerpt from today: After having an extra guilty helping of leftover cake this afternoon, I had a major sugar rush and was itching to play a game of tennis (too bad the season's over and there's no one to play with me right now anyways) but I went on a nice long jog/walk with my dog instead and spared my mom an hour of having to deal with a super jittery, sugar-hyped teenager. That's my good deed for the day.