Birthday Party Baking

Over the weekend we had our annual tri-birthday party for me and my two friends, Sarah and Jeff. This year I decided to make the cakes as well as a couple of dips to tide people over for the evening.

	Cake 1: Pound Cake I pulled this from the Cooks' Illustrated cookbook my girlfriend's parents got me for Christmas. It was my first attempt at Pound Cake and I slightly overcooked it, but it still turned out fairly well. This was the "classy" cake and as such gave it to Sarah.
	Cake 2: Chocolate Sheet Cake This one went to Jeff. If you love chocolate, you'll love this cake. I considered it the "common man's" cake of the group and it was very easy to make, though applying the warm icing was a mess as my sheet cake baked lopsided. This was probably the most popular of the three, followed closely by...
	Cake 3: The Pig Cake This one was a bit weird and as such I gave it to myself. It's a boxed yellow cake mix with mandarin oranges in the batter and a pineapple whipped topping. While delicious, the frosting drowned out the flavor of cake, but that was probably good as I accidentally added double the margarine.

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	Dip 1: Salsa Probably the easiest thing I made and by far my favorite of the bunch. I would absolutely recommend try this out for yourself. That said, if you don’t have a food processor I can’t vouch for the consistency, which might alter my opinion.
	Dip 2: Red Pepper Hummus It's so bad I'm not going to bother linking to the recipe. This used waaaay too much tahini, to the point where it just tasted like peanut butter. I tried to save it by adding more red peppers, garbanzo beans and lemon juice, but to no avail. Someday I'll find a good hummus recipe, but not today.
	Dip 3: Spinach and Artichoke I honestly didn't try enough of it to give it a fair shake, but what I tasted I liked. We did end up throwing it into the food processor as we though the pieces of artichoke and spinach were too big. I'll probably try it again, along with the salsa, at the next party.
	Dip 4: Buffalo Chicken Though it may not look terribly appealing, this was another incredibly delicious dish. Sadly, I don't think I'd ever make it for myself as it involves two sticks of cream cheese and a cup of ranch dressing. Evening sticking to low-fat versions of both it was a fairly rich dish. But I'll gladly make it for others.

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.