Judah is FIVE!

The birthday cake, or as Judah likes to call it, "The Birthday"

... because really, what's the point of a birthday without the cake?!

On September 21, Judah turned five. FIVE!  Here's the birthday boy with his cake. I asked him what kind of a cake he wanted, and he asked for a chocolate Star Wars cake. (His cousin Johnny had a Star Wars themed birthday party and cake, so naturally, so did Judah.) I told him, I could do chocolate and I could do Star.

Here's me and my three boys..

I made a chocolate sourdough cake, a recipe from one of my favorite blogs, A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa. I made it into two layers, the bottom being a 9 inch circle pan, and the top being a star pan that I got from Grandma and Grandpa Armbrecht!

I didn't follow the blog's recipe for frosting, because I wanted to use up some cream cheese I had put in the freezer a few months ago. The cream cheese frosting recipe I had posted on my birthday cake post was my intention.

Bad idea. If you make cream cheese from straining whey out of yogurt, and then freeze it, don't bother using it to make frosting at a later date. Because if you try to use it for frosting, the frosting will be all grainy, and runny, and yucky textured.

Sooo.... since I was bound and determined to use this cream cheese for frosting, I pulled out all the tricks I had up my sleeve. I tried adding some powdered sugar. I didn't want to add the entire bag, so I decided to try cooking it with cornstarch to thicken it. It helped some, but I really had to boil it to thicken it enough to make it a frosting consistency. And it still retained a wee bit of the grainy consistency.

It ended up being "saucy" in consistency, which I poured over the bottom layer before putting on the star, then poured it on top of the star layer.

It worked well enough, and now it's gone, but I only allowed myself one piece. Well, maybe one and a half. Because I was reminded that Enoch is STILL sensitive to the caffeine in the cocoa, and as I'm still nursing him.... caffeine is a no-no.

After the birthday meal and cake (I think we had potatoes, carrots, and a pork roast), Judah and his Daddy got to go out for a birthday deer posting. They got all dressed up in their invisible best, and got to see a lot of wild life on their outing. Andrew was quite upset that he didn't get to go along, though he got to go with Daddy by himself the next night.

I know this is out of order... but we also celebrated the boys' birthdays over Labor Day weekend, beginning of September with my parents. I couldn't find the candles then, so we lit these two candles and had shortcake with raspberry sauce. That's when Judah got his grand-daddy of birthday gifts... a bow!