Happy Birthday Johnny!

Saturday was John's birthday, but per his recent hectic work schedule, he was away on another business trip. In the past 2 months he has been to Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam (that was for fun), Portland, Arizona, and now this past weekend he was in London. I was disappointed that I didn't get to see him on his birthday since celebrating birthdays is one of my favorite pastimes, but I am sure he enjoyed his trip.

Since he may not have gotten to do much celebrating on the road (??), I made him some special treats this morning. Several of his office buddies have posted on facebook that they expect birthday cake upon his return, so I figured it was up to me to make that happen. Normally, I would hit up the grocery store for a good old box of Betty Crocker, but boxed cake mix is pretty difficult to find here--and when you do find it, it costs an arm and a leg! (6 Euros per box...yikes!). I decided to pull out he big guns and make birthday cake from scratch! John has pretty simple birthday cake taste and prefers a traditional vanilla/vanilla combo. Normally in the US I make him my signature Skor bar cake by adding crushed Skor bars to the batter and frosting, but again, I had to make some changes given the availability of certain items. I dug through my cookbooks and pulled out Williams Sonoma Desserts which happened to have a beautiful recipe for vanilla birthday cake with recipes for both chocolate and vanilla frosting.

Since most people like a little chocolate in their lives, I also added some chocolate sprinkles on top, but kept both the frosting and cake vanilla. I made cupcakes since they are easier to handle and don't require cutting and I hope they meet the standards of German birthday fare!

John gets a special cupcake upon his arrival tonight topped with a Kinder Hippo (one of our favorite candy selections from the local gas station!)

Happy Birthday JHT!