It was my younger son’s birthday yesterday and his request was for a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

So on Thursday morning, in between working with the two kids on their school work, managing their screen time, various Zoom sessions etc, I made this Fudge Birthday Cake from King Arthur Flour. (If you’re a regular-ish reader, you may know that I’ve used a lot of King Arthur Flour recipes!). And I made the mistake of letting him sample a small bit of the cake.

He was not a fan.

I thought it was fine. It had that chocolate fudge cake quality where the chocolate taste comes from cocoa powder. I don’t know, maybe he was expecting a more chocolate-y cake?

I did not want an unhappy birthday boy so I wrapped it up, set it aside in our freezer for another day (Mother’s Day perhaps? hahaha). And went ahead with a funfetti cake, as I know he always loves that one.

Just last month, I made one for the 9yo’s birthday with a deliciously strawberry buttercream. This time I went with this rainbow sprinkle cake recipe from the New York Times, and this chocolate frosting recipe from KAF. 

Luckily, I had added in an order of rainbow sprinkles to our delivery from Target the weekend before (which included toiletries, lots of snacks, and a new bicycle helmet for the birthday boy – he also got a new bike not from Target).

 

 

And since baking two cakes wasn’t enough for one day, I also tried making bagels for the first time. I used this recipe from King Arthur Flour. The article on how to shape bagels was helpful too, but from my not quite regular looking bagels, I definitely need more practice!

 

For my first attempt, they were not too bad, I reckon! They may look a little mishapened but they tasted great and the boiling was easier than I thought it would be – not sure why I was apprehensive about that now…I thought it might deflate after boiling and popping it onto the baking tray but it was actually ok.

We had them for breakfast next day, slightly toasted. Delicious!

 

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