Matt's Meat and Potatoes Birthday Cake

A few years ago, I saw a post by Chow.com about a crazy but delicious looking Thanksgiving cake. Its exactly what it sounds like, and I loved everything about the idea of it. But, its quite a lot of food so I've been waiting for a good time to make it for not only a big group of people, but open minded eaters as well. Normally, the fact that a big chunk of my close friends are or have been vegetarian has no effect on me at all, but a meat cake can be either traumatizing or useless to them (which has been confirmed after finally making this) so it was a no-go for most dinner parties I've been to.

Luckily my boyfriend, Matt, doesn't like most sweets. It's great for me because I never have to competitively eat cake while sharing a piece, but also because I get to do wacky shit like this and its highly appreciated. Additionally, his birthday landed on SuperBowl Sunday so we had a group to share it with.

Chow's instructions have pictures as well as a detailed explanation of the process, which was perfect because something that looks like a huge challenge became totally idiot-proof. I used the same processes, but different methods to make each component. If you haven't checked out the recipe, a quick roundup of the layers: turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, tuekey, and topped with sweet potatoes and marshmallows.

The only issue I ran into while making the cake was transferring it from where I was putting it together onto the mini-tray I made to slide it into the cake box, which I assembled around the cake after it was in place. (They recommend making it right before eating it, but I was transporting it since it was a surprise.) It got a liiiiiittle smooshed, but as it turns out, potatoes are pretty forgiving and it went back to the original shape.

I'm happy to say it was delicious (which was relieving, phew!) and now that I've followed the original recipe, I can't wait to try it out with different types of savory layers. Something kugel-ly is whispering in my ear.....

On a side note, grad school is (gasp!) cutting into my crafting and writing time, but I think it would be fun to do a little round up of the smaller projects I've been working on. So until then keep drooling over this meaty goodness over and over again.