Manburger's Birthday

Manburger is one year older (and more handsome too)!  We had a lovely dinner of spaghetti alla carbonara, not with bacon but with the real stuff, pancetta, and a nice green salad.  The cake I made this year was the best yet, for many reasons.  One is that it stuck to Manburger and my no refined sugars rule.  After making it through Lent without eating sugar, we've decided to stick with it and this cake was sweetened exclusively with whole dates and bananas.  The cake was this awesome banana bread recipe, doubled and baked in cake pans.  The filling was dark chocolate brownie batter dip, which crazily enough is primarily chickpeas.  I add a banana and double the cocoa in the recipe.  Then it was frosted with a chocolate peanut butter ganache; two 90% Lindt bars, 1/4 c. peanut butter, 2 Tbs raw honey (this and the tiny but of sugar in the Lindt bars were the only "refined" sweeteners) and 1/2 c. cream.  Seriously amazing and very filling, which is a good thing.  Manburger got a sweet Avengers t-shirt too, just so he has the appropriate gear for when we go see the Avengers movie opening weekend.  And yes, I did drop the ball a little, because as we were sitting down to dinner, I realized that I didn't have any birthday candles, ack!  I ended up using one of our house candles instead.  Not as cool, but it worked in a pinch!