I know that many folks think after a certain age, birthdays don’t mean as much. And many women disavow all knowledge of age past a given year, but I don’t hold with that. I like celebrating my birthday as well as the birthdays of people I care about.

This morning started with some very curious monkeys wondering what was in the pink polka-dot bag sitting next to my pillow.

Inside was a very Star Trek-themed birthday assortment, including The Star Trek Craft Book with the most adorable Spock Monkey I’ve ever seen on the cover. (Okay, so it’s the only Spock Monkey I’ve ever seen, on the cover of a book or otherwise, but it’s still darn cute! Oh, dear, unintended sock pun!)

Of course, no birthday is quite complete without some sort of celebratory dessert, but with my recent shift to wheat-free, the usual avenues were out. Todd came up with the idea to do a gluten-free ice cream cake and I realized it really wouldn’t be too difficult to pull off.

I started with a Betty Crocker gluten-free yellow cake mix baked in a false-bottom square pan (so I could easily remove the finished cake). Once it was cool enough, I split it in half and smooshed in a layer of Breyer’s Lactose-Free Vanilla ice cream, wrapped it up and stuck it in the freezer overnight to set up. Then I made a ganache of semi-sweet chocolate chips, lactose-free milk, vanilla, and a bit of coconut oil to help the ganache set up quickly. (Did you know chocolate + coconut oil is the magic formula to making your own magic shell-type ice cream topping?)

It was really tasty!

This birthday marked not only the end of a busy month but a busy year, overall. It’s been a very good year, no question, but this last month has been exceptionally packed. I’m looking forward to things normalizing for at least a month, but I know with the wedding coming up it’ll get more hectic as the year goes on.

Still, I’m going to do my best to enjoy a relaxing weekend before getting my back to the business as usual!