“Birthdays are nature's way of telling us to eat more cake.”

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We have had three birthdays in the Dispatch/Scheduling Department at work in the past week - which just goes to prove that September babies rule! - including my dispatch partner Jen, myself, and Renee who is the Employee Scheduling Coordinator. Hopefully that's it for a little while as my diet has totally flown out the window from all of the cake we've had on hand!

Speaking of cakes, I actually made that lovely beauty pictured above for Renee's birthday yesterday and I was quite proud of myself as it's been awhile since I've made a cake and I think it came out quite well if I do say so myself! Especially considering I made it in between reading and writing blog posts!

Renee likes anything chocolate - strawberries dipped in chocolate, chocolate-covered nuts, chocolate ice cream, hot chocolate, etc. - and even though I knew that one of the ladies in the Finance Department where Renee used to work before she came downstairs was making her a cheesecake, I wanted to make her a chocolate cake because when it's your birthday you should have whatever your favorites are, right?

With that in mind I decided to bake a chocolate fudge cake with a chocolate cream cheese filling and chocolate Dream Whip frosting. I had never done a chocolate cream cheese filling but it turned out to be quite easy (8 ounces softened cream cheese blended with 1-1/4 cups milk and then one 4-ounce package of instant chocolate pudding mix whipped in; refrigerate for 10 minutes; spread between layers). I even managed to expertly split my layers with sewing thread so that I had filling between three of them - I think Mags might have been proud of me! The frosting I made was a variation on one of my Dad's favorites which simply required a package of Dream Whip, milk, and sugar-free chocolate fudge pudding mix. Of course you have to keep the cake refrigerated because of the nature of the frosting but I suspect the cream cheese filling needs to be also.

Turns out the cake was quite delicious, not overly sweet but definitely chocolaty, and Renee was thrilled with it. It's nice to know that I still have some domestic abilities even though I don't use them too often these days! Now I'm thinking what might be real tasty is a lemon cake, lemon cream cheese filling, and a lemon Dream Whip frosting ... what do you think Miss Bee, how does that sound??