Chuck Smith's Blog

My Unbirthday Week November 10, 2008

Every year around November 13th we celebrate another year of Amanda’s existence with some combination of food, presents, and travel. When I was younger I was always jealous of my brother’s birthday so somehow I convinced my parents to give me gifts on the same day. These were, of course, called “un-birthday” gifts after the Mad Hatter’s song. This tradition continues to this day in my life, as Amanda and I always exchange gifts on each other’s birthday.

In recent years Amanda’s birthday has expanded into a birthday-week, and then a birthday-month. So really we just celebrate all November long. Amanda really wanted a birthday cake and I had a cake decorating related item on my 101 things list, so that’s where the celebration began.

Much to Amanda’s dismay, I’ve always been enthralled with liquor cakes, so I chose to make a Genoise cake from The Cake Bible. Amanda wanted a lemon cake with raspberry filling, so I used Limoncello in the syrup and make a lemon buttercream frosting. The raspberry filling was just a thin layer of Trader Joe’s jam.
With the cake baked layered, and reassembled, the decorating began in earnest. I must admit it was frustrating, but I did manage to squeeze out some ugly swirly flowers to top this cake. But who cares what it looks like because it tastes really good and I get to cross another thing off my 101 Things list!

To continue with the birthday celebration, we cooked up a BBQ Tri-Tip. What better opportunity to use one of the bourbon BBQ sauces I got Amanda for her birthday? And what about that Signature BBQ Rub that’s on my 101 Things list?

A couple of years ago I made a BBQ rub that I enjoyed eating as a snack it was so good: salty, sweet, spicy, and smoky all at once. So this was my attempt to recreate this rub:

• Brown sugar – 2 tbsp
• Ground guajillo chiles – 1.5 tbsp
• Smoked paprika – 2 tsp
• Smoked salt – 1.5 tsp
• Salt – 1 tsp
• Sweet paprika – 1 tsp
• Ground yellow mustard – 1 tsp
• Ground black pepper – 1 tsp
• Onion powder – 1/2 tsp
• Garlic powder – 1/2 tsp
• Cumin – 1/4 tsp
• Allspice – 1/4 tsp

Overall it was quite tasty. The brown sugar gave it a great sweetness to balance out the medium spiciness of the guajillos. Wth smoked paprika and smoked salt also gave it a good smoked flavor (which is important since we aren’t allowed to smoke things in our balcony). The tri-tip turned out great, topped with a little bit of Fighting Cock Barbeque Sauce from Hot Sauce World (I got Amanda a sampler of 5 bourbon-based BBQ sauces for her birthday).