A Strawberry MIracle

One of the best parts of the kids' birthday cake was the strawberries.  Strawberries are their favorite fruit (and all-around favorite food on some days), but their birthday is in October- not exactly prime season for these little berries.  

But thanks to the miracle of hoop houses, we have locally grown, organic strawberries in October.  Pretty amazing, but it makes sense.  We're got fantastic sunshine well into fall in Minnesota (okay, except today).  Adding even a little greenhouse/hoophouse/old window pane over a garden can dramatically raise the temperature and extend the growing season.  These strawberries tasted almost as good as the June berries from our garden!  I'm tempted to start construction on one now so I can be eating garden berries in April!

Now more about that cake:  Out of endless possibilities of flavor combinations, the boys chose chocolate peanut butter with strawberries on top.  They couldn't really decide between chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting or peanut butter cake with chocolate frosting.  So I did what any chocolate and peanut butter lover would do.  I made both!

oops- forgot to take an inside shot until now.  Just a few slices left!

This cake has peanut butter cake with peanut butter buttercream and then chocolate cake with chocolate ganache over the whole thing.  It was kind of like a giant, cakey peanut butter cup (no complaints here).  

The coolest part was that all the kids at their party were asking for more strawberries before they even finished their cake.  Hooray for fruit-loving kids!

So grown up!