Lately, I’ve had a lot to celebrate, and I did so with this cake.

This cake helped me celebrate:

Another full year of my life.
A weekend spent with my family.
Greg and I’s first batch of homemade beer (more on that later!).
Another full year spent with Greg.
Six full, happy months at an apartment and job that are both loved.
 Almost one full year of The Dreaming Foodie!
And everyday, I’m celebrating being one day closer to spring!

I don’t make cakes often, but I’ve decided that when I do, they are going to count. Just like the cake I made to celebrate the new year, much thought and time went into this one. I took parts of this recipe, from Sweetapolita, for vanilla cake with homemade blackberry filling. I followed the vanilla cake recipe exactly, followed the blackberry filling recipe exactly, and made the vanilla frosting but used regular sugar and added a vanilla bean. Warning though, if you use regular cane sugar in frosting, the frosting will be crunchy! Although it sounds delicious, I left the vanilla mascarpone filling out for reasons of simplicity.

I simply made two 5-inch vanilla cakes, let them cool, topped one with both vanilla frosting and blackberry filling, placed the other cake on top, and spread vanilla frosting roughly all around.

This cake was so delicious, but was made better by the people who I shared it with. Isn’t that the best? It’s so great to celebrate with cake.