Coffee Spice Birthday Cake ...and Chicken Soup ?

Coffee Spice Cake with Mocha Butter Frosting

Just throw everything into the pot...skins and all!!

The soup, after a few hours of cooking


I gave myself a day off today from my usual Sunday farmers market to take a baking break ...or so I thought and get some much needed rest. My friend , Janet and I got back late Thursday from the Brimfield Antique/Flea market shows going on there all week, We walked all day for hours !! It was exhausting but fun. I only came home with a few things but Janet found lots of pink stuff...her specialty!



Even though I took time off from my business baking, I still managed to make a birthday cake and chicken soup! I called my older son, Jim, to wish him a happy birthday today only to find he was sick in bed...so I couldn't not cook or bake for my child. Nothing like chicken soup to make you feel better!! So I made Ina Garten's Chicken Stock Recipe but ...geez...3 whole chickens!! really Ina..that's a bit extreme !! I don't even have a pot big enough for 3 whole chickens!! I made one third the recipe, using one chicken and all the wonderful herbs and veggies she suggests. It did come out great!! It has a great rich flavor and color.


As for the cake, I love to collect old cookbooks and I recently recieved, from a friend, an old volume from 1949 of recipes. One of the cake recipes interested me so I thought I'd give it a try. It's for a Coffee Spice Cake with Mocha Butter Frosting. It turned out really very good with nice spice flavor, with molasses in the recipe. The frosting has coffee and cocoa and it had a good coffee flavor. ( I'll post the recipe tomorrow, promise! ).So that's some of what my little boy...I mean..my oldest...got for his 32nd birthday!! Yikes...how'd he get to be 32?! Where'd the time go!