The realm of video game character cakes is usually left to pre-pre-teens and creepy basement dwellers, but my best friend is neither. For those of you unfamiliar with my surrogate sister…

She sports an eye patch from time to time. For her twentieth birthday I got the amazing idea to make a Kirby cake! Despite being an adorable, extremely Japanese video game character, and filled with ice cream… it was a surprisingly sophisticated dark chocolate cake with white chocolate frosting. If any of you brave souls would like to attempt a repeat of my undeniable awesomeness, here’s a break down.

I started by adapting this brownie recipe. You heard correct, sir. Brownies. And when I say adapted I mean tripled, thinned out with a little milk, and added some baking powder. Tada! Dark chocolate cake.

BUTTER!

When the batter looks something like La Brea tar, you’re on the right track.

I used two 9” rounds for Kirby’s body and a 9”x4” casserole dish for his limbs. For guaranteed easy removal, line the bottoms of your cake pans with wax paper.

I filled his body with ice cream, carved his limbs out of the rectangular cake and popped him in the freezer. My dad calls this “Ghetto Kirby.”

To give Kirby his signature color I tinted this white chocolate buttercream recipe with red food coloring. I also added a little salt and some almond extract to kill the sweetness a tad.

He’s so cute! For his eyes and the outline of his mouth I bought some of those Betty Crocker frosting bags.

Helisia loves Kirby!

OH GOD! MY SPLEEN!

And he was delicious.

A few extra tips… If you’re going to fill your cake with ice cream like I did you might want to freeze it over night before frosting. We had some problems with Kirby leaking vanilla-y goo… The frosting for his shoes was the same white chocolate buttercream, but when I added more food coloring it looked like melted lipstick. To darken it a but I added a teaspoon or two of dark cocoa powder. It made it even more chocolatey and delicious.

I truly love the physical California. I’m entirely okay with cutting out Sacramento and ceding it to Wyoming, they could use the population density. In an attempt to balance our severely screwed budget the legislators of California have opted to close 70 state parks. Considering there are 278 state funded recreation areas in California, this seems like an insignificant dent. Of the six parks closing in the North Valley, I’m uninterested in five of them, but there’s one that seems like an absolute travesty to lose.

Nestled along the Nor Cal stretch of I-5, riddled with runaway truck ramps and classy joints like Basshole and Finlandia!, is Castle Crags. The park consists of 4,350 acres of wilderness, 28 miles of hiking trails and over 80 campsites. It’s scheduled to close in July of 2012.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Nor Cal wilderness, it looks like the forest moon of Endor. Almost of all of it.

In honor of this area landmark’s closure my cousin Destry (Remember him? He likes steak.) and I hiked the park’s main attraction: Castle Dome.

It seems mild at first, 5.4 miles round trip through the beautiful Shasta-Trinity National Forest with Indian Springs around half-way. Oh, and the 2,200 foot elevation gain. When they said strenuous they weren’t kidding.

So, I have what some may refer to as a bad habit of engaging in strenuous physical activity on an empty stomach. Perhaps a remnant of my swim days. There’s a simple reason for this. I prefer dry heaving to puking, and believe me it applied to this hike. I was wheezing like a fat asthmatic smoker the whole way up. Slowed Destry down considerably.

On a weird side note, my ears ring when I’m about to puke. It’s like an air raid siren; can’t do anything about it, but at least I know what’s coming.

Anyway, we finally made it to the top. Destry wandered off to explore and I made some phone calls (cell reception’s fabulous up there). I’m just now realizing I didn’t actually take any pictures with my camera from the top, just my cell phone. Totally spaced that one, so here’s a cell phone picture.

On the way down we detoured to nature’s bottle-filler, Indian Springs.

And we finally made it down without seriously injuring ourselves or dying. To celebrate, and retrieve much needed sustenance, we headed north along the 5 a few more miles to Mt. Shasta’s Goat Tavern. There we made fun of Hipsters and enjoyed delicious Wino Burgers and garlic fries.

BUT! The day was not yet over! So we jumped off this bridge.

If you live in California, there are numerous groups protesting the closure of our State Parks. To see the full list of parks to be nixed and to get involved check out the California State Parks or National Park Conservation Association websites.