Happy Birthday To Me!

I have to say, I have the most supportive family when it comes to my Primal lifestyle. They are absolutely wonderful. I had the best birthday celebration last night.

My day started out a little crazy, gathering up half of my kitchen to take to my parents house, where all the cooking and celebrating would take place. Cooking at my parents house makes me realize how much I really love cooking in my own kitchen. But because of cirumstances the birthday couldn't be at my house this year, so I packed up a box full of essentials and out the door I went.

Not being a fan of your typical floury, processed, store-bought birthday cake, the day started out with mom and I making one from scratch. Flourless of course... with a yummy cream cheese frosting. It wasn't low carb really, with the inclusion of lots of honey, but hey... it's once a year.

So we broke out our ingredients and this is what we created.

Nutty Pumpkin Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Cake Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups of pumpkin
2 cups of nut butter
2/3 cups of honey
2 eggs
2 tsp baking soda

Frosting Ingredients:
8 ounces of cream cheese
1/2 stick of butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon juice
honey to taste (about 1/2 cup)

Heat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease a baking dish. If you plan on turning the cake out, grease a cake pan and "flour" it. Arrowroot powder works well for this. Any "floury" substance will work but I used arrowroot.

Mix your cake ingredients together until well mixed and fluffy, and pour into your pan. With my cake I used 2 cake pans and split my batter in half for each pan. That way I could put frosting between the layers. Bake for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and let the cake cool. Mix your frosting ingredients together and frost your cake.

With my cake we allowed the cakes to cool and turned them out of their pans. We frosted the top of one cake and placed the second layer on top of it, then frosted the second cake. Then we sprinkled the top with shaved chocolate, a few slices of kiwi and some golden raspberries.

This is a really yummy, fairly dense cake. You'll want something to drink with it since it has a more brownie-like texture. Sort of like banana bread.

About the same time Mom and I got the cake done, Dad was home from work and we started cooking up dinner. He began with a venison meat loaf- Primal style. Just a pound of venison, a couple eggs, some onion and lots of spices. While he prepared that, I put some of my treasured coyote meat in a marinade. Yes, more about that in a later post. There will be a coyote blog very soon, I promise. :)

Besides the venison meat loaf, and coyote, I roasted up some carrots, daikon and GBrussels sprouts. Gigunda Brussels sprouts! Those things were HUGE. I hope mine grow that big this summer. Dad also decided to cook up some wild salmon. Oh, and there were a couple beef rib bones in there somewhere too. It was a fantastic Primal feast like you wouldn't believe.

Wait, we can't forget about the prezzies! It's not a birthday without a few gifts, and my family was so kind to me this year. My sister got me a lovely big, red flower pot packed FULL of fruit. Apples, various pears, blood orange, an avocado, kumquats, a papaya, grapes, and raspberries. From my parents 

I got a dozen wire-top bottles, ideal for bottling my kombucha. I can't wait to finish a batch and get it bottled. Also from my parents, a leg of lamb- pastured -and fresh rosemary, and a beautiful new chefs knife! It cut through daikon like butter. It's my new baby.

Oh yeah, and I got a hula hoop! We couldn't wait to try it out!

Of course you can't have birthday cake without ice cream. I didn't plan ahead enough to make my own out of coconut milk, so I bought some So Delicious Coconut Milk ice cream... Cherry Amaretto flavor. It was delicious and it cooperated with my stomach. Yay for no bubble guts! My only qualm was the inclusion of agave syrup in the ingredients list. Hopefully by next year I'll have perfected some ice cream making skills enough to have my some home-made ice cream.

It was a very filling, and fulfilling day for sure. I can't say enough how grateful I am for my family, and how much I enjoyed my birthday. Thank you to all my friends for the wonderful birthday wishes. It was indeed a very special day.