My husband’s birthday is one day before mine. That was great one year. We were living in the same town as my aunt. She made a cake and we had a family party, it was wonderful. Other times my husband has been “out of town” (deployed) for my birthday or left on my birthday. One year I was at my parent’s house and it was wonderful (besides the absence of my husband). All my family was there and I requested Thanksgiving dinner. May is the perfect time for turkey! Some years we go out and have a cake on his birthday and have leftovers for mine. This year has been pretty fabulous. We went for a road trip last weekend. We saw Bruneau Dunes, soaked in Miracle Hot Springs, gazed in wonder at Shoshone Falls and marveled at Balanced Rock. Super-fun trip. For my sweetie’s day I grilled shrimp and chorizo kebabs and made a triple layer chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. I assume the cake is pretty good, he ate 1/4 of it in one sitting. However, I am staying away from chocolate and I used real butter in the frosting so I can’t really say. On to the point!

I decided to make myself a little carob birthday cake.  When I make things dairy free I am usually satisfied with the results. However, I am having a difficult time substituting carob for chocolate. It is not that the recipes are too hard to find or that I can’t just substitute carob powder for cocoa powder in most recipes. It is the taste. Carob is pleasant, it gives a gorgeous color to brownies and cakes, but it is not chocolate. Before giving up chocolate I ate some every day. I was perhaps a chocoholic. I wasn’t aware of the way it affected my body because it was never out of my system. I really don’t know if can do this. Can I live without chocolate? Back to the point!

I bought Carob Cookbook by Tricia Hamilton and the first thing I made was the Mocha Fudge Cake, but it wasn’t mocha because I am also trying to avoid coffee. I think it would be better with coffee, in fact it would have been amazing with cocoa powder and coffee, but then I couldn’t have eaten it, so I made it with carob and water. I am seriously considering buying coffee substitute, but holy moly, that stuff is expensive! Anyway, I made a half recipe to fit into two 6″ pans and made it dairy free. When I bought the cookbook I didn’t really think about the recipes being dairy-free friendly. They are not, if you were wondering. For the frosting I used an old recipe called “Ciddy Ellifson Frosting”, it’s also called Cooked Icing and Red Velvet Frosting. We never had Red Velvet cake when I was a kid, but I loved this frosting on chocolate cake.