Spaghetti and Tiramisu Birthday Cake
Another trip around the sun and we are still in pandemic mode. At times it feels like we’ve lost a year (going on two). But in reality—a lot has happened since this all started. Life goes on and we’ve all had to find creative ways to celebrate special events in our lives. My daughter turned 30 earlier this month, which made me reflect on all the birthdays we’ve celebrated. I was the mom who started months in advance with planning a themed birthday party for my kids. My daughter was more into it than my son (go figure). Fast forward to my daughter’s 30th. We were traveling over her birthday, so once we were back to our respective homes, I wanted to properly celebrate with a birthday dinner and cake. She lives three hours away, so the transportation of said cake needed to be considered. I decided to make spaghetti-sauce-to-go and a tiramisu cake that could travel without too much trouble.
Birthdays demand cake. Even if you’re 30. It really is all about the cake.
Although somewhat random, my choice for dinner was loosely based on spaghetti having been one of my daughter’s favorite childhood meals (plus the cloudy weekend begged for spaghetti) and the fact that she studied abroad in Italy during college. Add some wine, and you have a theme! (Sans favor bags and games, of course.) Speaking of, I shall digress for a short walk down birthday-party memory lane. I’ve always been on Team Birthday Celebration Required. To say I was a little OCD about having everything from the invitation to party activities to the favor bags and the cake fit the theme may be an understatement.
My daughter on her 6th birthday. Note that Madeline’s hair should have been red!
Birthday themes for my daughter began at the age of three with a Winnie the Pooh party that included piglet cupcakes and dropping “bees” in a honeypot game. Guests dressed up in princess attire for a Cinderella party where we served the requisite Barbie doll cake in a ball gown of frosting. One year we had a Madeline party with a French café setting where all the girls baked bread. For this party I ordered a Madeline cake – and to my dismay when I picked up the cake, Madeline’s hair was not red. Who does not know that Madeline has red hair! Pour l’amour de Dieu! One year was a Hawaiian pool party (in Arizona so we had the pool). I made a rendition of an American Girl tiered tropical cake decorated with Runts candies. I remember standing over the candy machine at the entrance to Bashas grocery store and repeatedly inserting quarters to get enough of the banana and fruit shaped candies to decorate the cake. Do those machines still even exist? A group favorite was what we dubbed the “Red Hot Slumber Party”. Mind you, it was August in Phoenix. We stayed at a local resort that offered cut rates for the summer and showed movies at the pool. Super fun. I absolutely had to put boxes of Red Hots cinnamon candy in the favor bags. I scoured the town to find little boxes of these retro candies. Guys, this was B.A. – Before Amazon. Before we moved from Arizona, my daughter’s last party was a Murder Mystery party complete with my son and husband playing the roles of murder victim and butler. In retrospect, a huge thanks goes to my husband and son for putting up with us girls.
Back to the traveling birthday celebration. A mom’s gotta do what a mom’s gotta do.
Mom’s Spaghetti
I like to mix my sauce with the spaghetti so every bite is covered in sauce.
My spaghetti is the best spaghetti. Haha, I’m sure it’s not the best but I love my spaghetti sauce the most. I don’t really have a recipe for spaghetti. It’s one of those dishes that’s relaxing for me to make, no recipe and not much thinking. I’ve tried to capture how I make it, but feel free to adjust.
Ingredients
1-2 Tbs. olive oil
1 lb. lean hamburger
½ small onion, (about ½ cup chopped)
3-4 cloves garlic, minced (or more if you love garlic)
Lots of black pepper
Kosher salt
1-2 tsp oregano
1-2 tsp basil
1-2 tsp Italian seasoning
1 bay leaf
About 38 oz tomato sauce (two 15 oz cans and one 8 oz can)
Thin spaghetti (about ¾ of the 1 lb. box)
Fresh parmesan cheese
Directions
Heat olive oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Chop half an onion and add to the pan. Let sauté for a few minutes until it starts to get soft. Then add your garlic and cook for another minute. You can add the ground beef with the onion and cook it all together. Salt and pepper the beef at this point. Once the hamburger is cooked, drain if necessary.
Add the meat mixture back to the pan. Add the tomato sauce and stir to combine over low heat. I just eyeball the seasonings as I dump them in, but I have provided an estimated amount above. Remember you can always add more, but you can’t take the seasoning back out. Sprinkle in the dried basil, oregano and Italian seasoning. Drop in a large bay leaf. Add more salt and black pepper. Let simmer for at least 30 minutes to an hour with the lid off. Depending on how long you simmer, it may get thicker than you like. In that case, just put the lid on and simmer some more until it reaches the desired consistency. My rule of thumb: Taste frequently and adjust seasonings.
Serve with thin spaghetti. Over the years, I’ve joined Team Thin Spaghetti. I don’t know that it really tastes any different, although different pasta shapes pair better with specific sauces. Maybe you get more sauce with thin spaghetti? It’s really a matter of preference. Also up for debate is whether to serve your sauce on top of your pasta or mix it together? I’m on Team Mix-it-Together. (I know, I know. I’m on a lot of teams.) Why mix it? Probably because that’s what my mom did. That way you get sauce distributed in every bite. I usually leave a little sauce on the side and place on top of the mixed spaghetti and serve with lots of freshly grated parmesan.
There she is. My spaghetti all twirled up nicely.
I most always serve Caesar salad with spaghetti. And then there’s bread. Mmm, I love bread … but does anyone really need bread on top of pasta? Probably not. But birthdays definitely call for warm bread and butter with your spaghetti.
Tiramisu Cake with Kahlua Pastry Cream
Make sure to line your pan with parchment paper that hangs over the edges. This way you can hold each side and lift out of the pan and onto a cutting board or plate.
I had been wanting to make a tiramisu dessert after discovering the Tiramisu in Zoë Bakes Cakes book. Her’s is an espresso sponge cake brushed with a coffee and booze soaking syrup, layered with pastry cream and whipped mascarpone, and dusted with cocoa powder and chocolate shavings. The tiramisu sheet cake from Erin at The Cloudy Kitchen had also caught my eye and seemed way simpler. Still, I was trying to figure out how I would transport the cake and if I should make all or part of the cake in advance. I don’t have a trifle bowl to show off the layers and Zoë’s recipe has a lot of steps … so I reached out to Erin who helped me make my decision. She said she always transports her cakes in their pans. She also suggested this recipe for an 8x8 vanilla snack cake (minus the sprinkles), which is pretty much the same as the 13x9 sheet cake. Perfect solution for just the three of us. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about Zoë’s pastry cream. Here’s what I did.
Steps
Bake the vanilla snack cake, let it cool for 20 minutes and remove from the pan. In the meantime, brew a cup and half of coffee and set aside to let cool. I’m not a big fan of amaretto or brandy, so I added a splash of Kahlua to the coffee. Once the cake was cool enough, I sliced it horizontally, poked holes all over it with a skewer and brushed both halves with the coffee.
Make Zoë’s recipe for Pastry Cream (page 231 in Zoë Bakes Cakes); you only need about half the recipe. If you make ahead, put plastic wrap directly on top of the custard and place in fridge.
Make half the mascarpone frosting from the Tiramisu Sheet Cake recipe. It’s in grams, so with a scale this is easy to do.
Lighten up the pastry cream by whipping in several big spoonfuls of the mascarpone until you have the consistency you want. Tasting encouraged. I also added a little more Kahlua.
Assemble the cake. Line a clean 8x8 pan with parchment paper (or foil) so it hangs over the edges like handles. Place half the cake back in the pan. Using an offset spatula, cover the cake with pastry cream. Dust with cocoa powder and finely grate a high-quality milk chocolate bar over the cake.
Next, add the second layer of cake. Frost with the mascarpone frosting making swirls with your spatula. Dust with cocoa and chocolate. I added a few sprinkles and the “3-0” which I thought was a candle until we tried to light it and discovered it was a “cake topper”. Oh boy. Haha.
Just look at those layers of coffee-soaked cake and yummy mascarpone and chocolate. Please ignore the burnt marks on the “3-0” !!
The days of themed birthday parties may have faded into memories, but I’m still a firm believer that everyone should be celebrated and have cake on their birthday. Remember, I’m on that team — the mom team that bakes cakes for their kids no matter the age. I’ve read that Zoe actually mailed her son a birthday cake to his dorm. So awesome. Maybe I wouldn’t go that far. But I did learn that thinking about how you’ll transport the cake is very important. I ended up putting the 3-0 decoration into the cake and covering it with a dome of foil – so it wasn’t directly touching the frosting and placing it snuggly in a cooler for its ride down the I-5 corridor.
Worked great! Let’s eat cake!