Molly's Birthday Cake

Hey All, So our own Molly Schnick had a Birthday last week and I wanted to make her a special cake (duh). In one of this summer's issues (the avocado love issue) of Saveur they had this article on the history of Root Beer. There was a little snippet about a southern Root Beer Cake a contributer remembered from a family reunion in North Carolina. PERFECT. I set out to make a three layer and it came out beautifully!! The only qualm I had with it was, well not root beery enough. (However, you can order root beer extract from Zatarain's, the company that makes Nawlin's style rice and bean mixes, apparently they started out with root beer extract!)

I decided I wanted to take it a bit further and make a ROOT BEER FLOAT cake. So I ditched the root beer frosting in the recipe and made a vanilla bean buttercream, which gave it the lil flecks and it looked great. Again, I wished it was more true to it's flavor, I only added one vanilla bean and some extract...maybe two beans next time? Anyway here are some pics. Oh and I made Pecorino Frico for our salads, so easy and elegant...and delish. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIL' SCHNICK!!