A $65,000 Kitchen Giveaway and Two Birthday Cakes To Share

Heads up! The question for this Hooked On and Foodie Friday is: Who gives away a $65,000 kitchen?

Not I.

I mean, I would if I could; I'm not stingy. But if I had $65,000 I would be renovating my kitchen, not yours. I could go for something like this:

Dibs on that design.

(Picture from the Traditional Home website.)

The good news is that Traditional Home Magazine is sponsoring a Kitchen Makeover Sweepstakes, worth over $65,000. I have entered. Several times. Okay, lots of times.

I am Hooked On winning this one, in this Hooked On Houses Friday blog party post.

You can enter, too, by going to Traditional Home Magazine's website (just click here).

Good luck! Although don't get your hopes up, because I am going to win this one. That Old House could use some serious cosmetic surgery in the kitchen department. A little Botox ain't gonna do it.

Visit Julia and the other Hooked On bloggers by clicking here!

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Now . . . on to things I can share for Foodie Friday: Birthday Cakes and other delights.

Many thanks to Michael at Designs by Gollum for the dizzying array of foodie posts linked up to her Foodie Friday blog party. Click here to join the fun, and see how it's done!

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Last week was my birthday, and daughter Anne made my cake.

When your cake baker is a design student, your cake looks like this:

with flourishes like this:

and the best part is . . . the design is chocolate, and edible. Ummm . . .

It's a simple yellow cake, an old Fannie Farmer recipe, made with the brown sugar and Splenda baking blend, and between the cake layers Anne put a fudge filling made of bittersweet chocolate and condensed milk, and then thinned and added confectioner's sugar to that, to make the frosting. It was scrumptious.

This week, it was Annie's turn to turn a year older. All of 22. Twenty-two.
Yikes. I have lipsticks older than that.

On her birthday, Anne and I were busy cruising her new college town scouting apartment locations. Mid-afternoon, we broke for lunch at a charming Greek taverna, split an entree, and realized we would not be needing dinner that night.

So . . . while we were driving home through evening traffic,
Howard got to work in the kitchen, and made Anne's favorite "cake."

He cut up and Splenda-ed fresh strawberries:

And made-from-scratch biscuit shortcakes, subbing Splenda for sugar:

What a good daddy!

You put a warm crumbly biscuit, cold sweet strawberries,
and fresh whipped cream together and what have you got?

Just about the best combination dinner-and-dessert a birthday girl could want!

Birthday cakes come in all shapes and sizes, and are not necessarily cakes. This would work:

It's the chocolate chip cookie pie that my friend Mardi brought for our dessert when she and her husband came for dinner a couple of weeks ago. Warm that wedge up in the microwave, and nuzzle it up to some vanilla ice cream and . . . oh yeah. (I think it came from Costco! Now that is my kind of recipe.)

It's Friday! Go play. -- Cass