I don’t know about you but my holiday was very sweet. I baked a red velvet cake for my birthday . . .

IMPORTANT reminder … do not use low-fat cream cheese. Full fat is the only thing that will work. I learned that the hard way.

I used Martha Stewarts recipe. It uses more chocolate than most other recipes so really the result is a nicely chocolaty cake. The recipe also uses and INSANE amount of red food coloring. FOUR bottles (ounces). Seriously. I only used three and the cake was dark, dark red. Two would have been sufficient I suppose. It was one amazing cake.

The other dessert we made was Lemon Meringue Pie. WOWee! We (my sister and I) used America’s Test Kitchen’s recipe. We used Meyer Lemons (see previous post) because they’re juicier than regular lemons, two gave us a half cup of juice. I made the crust by hand with butter, Crisco, vodka and water. It was perfect. The filling was so good it has converted me to actual fandom of meringue pies. The one problem with the pie was the weeping. We did exactly what the recipe said. Cornstarch paste added to the egg whites. Meringue placed on piping hot filling. It was a mile high and beautiful. But it still weeped. I’m thinking that weeping is a natural by-product of meringue pies. Have you ever made one? Did it weep?

Here’s the pie.

I should have taken a picture of it sliced. It didn’t last too long in this house. My Mr. loves lemon meringue.