Marathon baking & lofty dessert ideals

My husband has a sweet tooth, but he also has a belly for spice. 

For his birthday I decided to make a special breakfast of cranberry walnut scones (based on a master scone recipe) and pumpkin chocolate pancakes, a lunch of nasi tomato (spiced tomato rice), beef kurma and acar timun from Azie's Kitchen. For his birthday cake, I wanted to make a coffee-chocolate cake and a chocolate ganache. 

It took a couple of weeks of braining how and when I would have time to achieve all this whilst also actually spending time on his birthday with him, but here's how things unfolded:

I started on the scones while prepping dinner on the eve of his birthday, and let it sit in the fridge overnight. In the morning, I got up early to start on the chocolate cake. (Of course, at this time Pan decided to wake up too, barking his head off. I had to let him out just so he wouldn't wake the whole neighborhood up. Then he asked to go outside, and once allowed out, proceeded to bark his head off at all the squirrels for an extended period. In hindsight perhaps I should've let him in on my plans so that he wouldn't have tried so hard to foil them.)

Once I got the cake into the oven, I started on the pancake batter. Done with pancake batter, I pulled out scones from fridge and popped them into the often. Suddenly I heard dear husband wake up and about upstairs, so I quarantined him to the room to continue reading Fevre Dream and sent up a double espresso to keep him company.  In that time, I got the pancakes on the griddle and some ghost pepper honey-basted chicken sausages as well. I debated whether I wanted to add eggs but it was a short debate because a) I'm the one who likes eggs, not him and b) ain't nobody got time for that. 

It was 30 mins later, but I managed to stash my cake somewhere inconspicuous to continue cooling, and have the scones, pancakes, and coffees at the table along with his birthday card before getting him to come down for breakfast.

In his card was a clue to our first activity--a visit to the zoo! In winter! It was a small zoo, but we saw elephant and giraffe feedings, and a snow leopard and a lynx (up close!) before returning home for lunch-- which I still had to cook. To divert him, I gave him a second clue for one of his gifts which he tried to figure out as I frantically started to work in the kitchen. Once he figured that out (a massage chair pad), he was then tasked with a crossword puzzle while trying out the massage chair, which upon completion would give him another clue to his second gift. With God's infinite mercy, my usually very sharp husband actually struggled quite a bit with the crossword, and I managed to finish cooking before we had to pray and he still didn't figure out the whole thing without a couple of extra clues.

After lunch, we took a walk and caught the sunset at Cobb's Hill (this reservoir nearby our house). When we got back I barred him out of the kitchen while I completed my final baking task for the birthday-- the chocolate ganache.

Luckily the ganache turned out fine and good, but I wanted to whip the remaining ganache into a moussey cream to pipe onto the cake. Alas, I did not have a pipe! Several curses and kicks to self later, but I realized I could try to pipe with a ziplock bag. Lo and behold, my initial tries gave me poop swirl-looking little blobs! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I think I did both. But then salvation, I proceeded to use decorative sugar stars to top them up and somehow they managed to look less poopy.

Happy birthday song and candle-blow out later-- the moment of truth! We ate the cake and he noticed my furrowed brow and frown and asked whether the cake met my "lofty dessert ideals". I said the cake is fine, but I couldn't taste the coffee which was what was slightly disappointing. Oddly though, it turned out all the coffee taste was at the end of the cake, and it was a better cake there. 

Regardless, at the end of the day I was quite relieved that I had finished my baking/cooking marathon. The scones were buttery, crumbly on the sides and soft in the middle with a good amount of cranberry and walnuts throughout. The pancakes were fluffy and pumpkin-y. The nasi tomato was good, beef kurma one of my better attempts, and the acar timun tasted right. The chocolate cake looked decent and tasted good. 

Most importantly, I think he had a nice birthday, albeit a mentally challenging one. Now I can start thinking about his birthday crossword for next year *rubs fingers gleefully*...

The coffee-chocolate cake with chocolate ganache drizzle and whipped ganache swirls aka poop blobs.