Birthday potluck and birthday cake

Two Fridays ago, I got to participate in two delicious birthday parties.  The first was for my second-cousin-once-removed Hollyn's 1st birthday and involved a family lunch of fish, stuffed chicken breasts, steak, rice pilaf, roasted asparagus, and salad, and ended with a many-layered chocolate peanut butter buttercream layer cake from Vanilla Bake Shop, plus berry cobbler and vanilla ice cream.  Mia definitely knows how to throw a party!  And Hollyn was, I am certain, the most adorable birthday girl I have ever seen :-).

After returning home to Westwood, I assembled a birthday cake for Alex and Brandon's joint birthday potluck.  I had baked the chocolate layers the previous night (following Amanda Hesser's Dump-It Cake recipe), so before the potluck I leveled the layers, stacked them with raspberry jam in between, frosted the entire thing with whipped cream, and used red frosting and decorating gel for the nerdy inscription:

My decorative border skills leave something to be desired

Thanks to everyone's culinary efforts, we had a tasty and varied dinner spread, most of which I managed to photograph.  Mushroom soup:

Falafels:

"Spreezy & Breezy's World Famous Mac n' Cheezy":

Tuna croquettes:

Roasted Brussel sprouts:

There were also meatballs, green salad, Chicken parmesan, and made-from-scratch mojitos.  We finished with a birthday toast, cake and ice cream, and a plate of lemon bars: