We celebrated my big sister's birthday this weekend. She is the firstborn in our family, and I'm telling you, that girl loves a celebration. Friends, gift, cards - the works.
Oh, also she likes cake.
My sister is off sugar these days, and of course Hubs and a few of my other siblings are off wheat and dairy. So my challenge was to make a gluten free, dairy free, sugar free cake. Phew. Which is darn near impossible. But I used my trusty carrot cake recipe, subbed in the Silvana's gluten free flour mix and good ole' Crisco. It wasn't bad, but it also wasn't amazing, so I'm not going to bother you with the recipe here. It looked like a cake and tasted like a cake but it was very, very crumbly. It was improved vastly by the addition of fresh sliced cherries between the layers and on top. Oh, and also whipped cream. Which I know cancels out the non-dairy aspect. I tried to do a non-dairy coconut whipped topping, but it failed miserably, probably because I did not have coconut milk that was high-fat enough. And then it turned out that a few of the non-diary eating guests could not make it, so that was all right. But despite its shortcomings, everyone ate it up. There was no cake left at the end of the party, but there were also a lot of people there, so, you know.
We'd picked out a 'talking' card for Auntie Gwen, and the Little Dude was almost as excited about it as she was. Almost. Because she was pretty excited. It was a lovely afternoon, perfect weather, fun outside, amazing dinner (my mom can rock a salad line up like no one else). And out on the lawn watching Kingfishers dive for their supper in the pond while we ate ours up on the hill, it was pretty idyllic. A happy peaceful family time.
Then, later on in the evening, my little brother dropped by.
(He's impersonating a chainsaw-weilding zombie killer in this photo. Don't ask. My favourite thing about this is that his mouth is open so wide you can see his fillings).
Honestly, could my siblings be any different? Chalk and cheese, I'm telling you. And of course, I love them both.
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