Devil's Food Cake and BBQ Ribs, Double Duty Baking For Birthday's and Christmas.

This is a beautiful tall, delicious cake baked in either 3, 8" pans or 2, 9" pans.

A great friend of ours asked me to help with the desserts for a Christmas Party for 100 people and  so these last weeks I have been baking and freezing cookies.  This morning I have until about 10:30 when I will have to leave for an appointment and I am trying something new.  Mixing up a double batch of cake batter and baking two three layer devils food cakes.  (  Posted 8/1/10 as Devil's Food Cake.)  The cakes will not all fit in the oven at once but only take 25 minutes to bake so I am going to have a run at it and see what happens.  If successful it will save me work.  One for this weekend and one for later.  I have made cookies and cakes ahead many many times and frozen them with excellent outcome. The cakes worked fine baking on two shelves and rotating the pans and shelved half way through the allotted baking time.  I double wrap one and freeze the layers to frost later,  just before the party they were baked for.

This weekends cake.

I arranged "3-8-4-2" candles in a line across the top as Joel was 38 and Mike 42 this month.  It was sort of funny to see 3,842 strewn atop the already tall cake!

Three slabs of baby back ribs smoked to perfection.

We also served Smoked BBQ baby back ribs, the very best Brian has ever made and a salad and twice baked potatoes all by request.  These we season with black pepper, kosher salt, and garlic powder, with a good pinch of red pepper flakes and smoke over low heat in a smoker for 5-6 hours then coat with sauce and wrap in foil and keep in the oven at 200 degrees for another couple of hours.  hey were perfection.  It was a nice evening.

Of course the best part is when they blow out the candles and we all smile and sing.  Happy Birthday boys.