I almost couldn’t believe it myself. I actually made a cake. A cake! But not just any cake. Ohh no. This is a Vanilla, Raspberry, & Oreo cake. Vanilla insides smothered in vanilla buttercream, filled with fresh raspberries and crushed Oreos, and topped with the same. It’s a work of art.

The sad (but not really sad) thing is that I am totally one of those people who makes a birthday cake for my dog. Yep, I said it.

Hi, my name is Raquel and I made a birthday cake for my dog.

My excuse is that it was also my birthday recently, so I made a cake for myself and for the dog. But the reality is that it definitely wasn’t ready for my birthday. That may have been due to the amount of Smirnoff Ice I drank on my birthday, but still. It wasn’t ready.

So instead I decided to make a cake for the pup. She is definitely way more deserving of this cake than I am, and could even use the extra calories around her waistline, unlike me. [[Don’t worry, I didn’t actually feed the cake to her.]]

Today is the day that my puppy turns two. Two! I can’t even describe how she has changed my world since we got her back in October of 2013. She is this constant presence, even when she’s not physically there, that makes me smile throughout the day. Dedas is a rather emotional pup. She’s not like a lot of other dogs that are just happy all the time. She has definite moods, which makes for a really interesting experience.

Sometimes she is grumpy, especially when we are not playing with the ball. She is happy when she’s around Phil, my parent’s dog, but would rather be playing with the ball. She’s entirely ecstatic whenever anything is happening with the tennis ball, and even more ecstatic if you are throwing it a long, long ways away. And then she is lazy. So, so lazy. Lazy dog comes out when I am at home working during the day (cause I do that now!!). She won’t even get up to get a bit of food I offer her. She lays in her bed and sleeps all. day. Unless, of course, I make any mention of or any move toward the – you guessed it – tennis ball.

She also gets scared rather easily, as evidenced by the photo below. All we wanted to do was take her outside to get some photos, but she thought we were taking her outside for slaughter. And then, you can tell AJ picked up a tennis ball and head it behind my head. She would never look so attentively at the camera otherwise.

But emotions and all, she really is my best little bud. Aside from AJ, that is.

Ok, cake. Cake! If you can’t tell from the photos, cake decorating is definitely not my forte. I can never seem to get the frosting to be all smooth and professional-looking like some other bloggers, but I find ways to hide my weaknesses. On this cake? The answer was Oreos. Delicious, chocolately, cream-filled Oreos. If you are vegan, you’ve likely heard that Oreos are vegan. And when you heard this, you broke out in song thanking the heavens above. Because let’s be real – who doesn’t love Oreos?

To hide my lack of skill in cake decorating, I used some crushed Oreos and some patience with a spoon to press the crumbs onto the side of the cake. It took a while (maybe 5 minutes?) to go around the whole cake, but I actually thought it made such a pretty and delicious end result.

And then I added candles. 2 pink ones for Dedas, and another 4 purple ones to represent the big two-four that I turned on Friday. We seem to lack any sort of normal candle-lighting tool, so AJ headed to the garage and got his blow-torch. Never a dull moment around here!

In all, I’m pretty proud of making myself (and the dog) a birthday cake this year. I feel like I always say I am going to do something like that and then miss the opportunity entirely. But this time, I kind of made it. Good enough for me!

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VANILLA, RASPBERRY, & OREO CAKE