[Inez] Multi-colored birthday cake

A week and a half ago my housemate, Ryan, crashed his bike and broke his face. Well actually he didn't break anything, but he did get stitches and the left side of his face did swell into a semi circle and his eye swelled shut and everything. Also, it was his birthday. So I made him a three layered, multi-colored, multi-flavored birthday cake.

Okay, so I had the plan before he crashed his bike, but isn't it nice as a "Sorry you crashed your bike on your birthday"?

Anyway, cake. Bottom later: orange. Middle layer: chocolate compost cake. Top layer: originally it was supposed to be hibiscus but then I remembered that Elise left us and moved back to Minnesota and took the hibiscus extract with her. So top layer: raspberry.

For the orange and raspberry I used a recipe for orange cake that I've used before, which calls for orange juice and orange zest. For the raspberry layer I just put pureed and strained raspberries in place of the orange juice and zest. If I did it again, I'd probably put whole raspberries in the batter as well, because it was a little lacking in raspberry oomph.

Oh yeah, and I added food coloring to the orange and raspberry layers. Just because.

For the filling between the layers I used Ruby's go-to chocolate cream cheese frosting:

1 package cream cheese, 6 T butter, 6 oz baker's chocolate, and a cup of whipping cream (whipped with a couple spoonfuls of powdered sugar. You can omit the butter, but I kept it because I wanted a nice smooth frosting.

Especially since I dyed two of the three layers, I wanted the outside to be more plain. I did a plain cream cheese-whipped cream frosting and added these silvery edible little decorative balls I got in Brazil. And star candles. Because it just seemed right.

(Recipes to come because I'm writing this from a Megabus to Philly for the weekend).