A Grown-Up Birthday Celebration

Our apartment is slowly moving back toward its pre-swine glory. Finally.

In fact, it was Chelsea's 22nd birthday on Monday. Now, Chelsea did her best to avoid a quarter life crisis induced fit of depression. Nonetheless, I heard plenty of "I'm old! My youth is over! I'm not 21 anymore!" and other similarly pathetic statements.

I think the very classy and girly wine and cheese night held in our apartment managed to cheer the loony up. A bunch of Chelsea's friends gathered to celebrate her existence, and it was a great, very grown-up night of cheerful conversation.

Being a wannabe housewife, I try to make cakes for my friends' birthdays. Chelsea, however, is not a huge fan of real cake, so I dug out an old recipe for an ice cream pie. Now, when I say recipe, I use the term loosely.

The ingredient for ice cream pie (and this is enough to make 2 pies):

• 2 half gallons of ice cream--You can use any flavors, but I used cookies and cream and chocolate chip cookie dough.
• 2 chocolate pie crusts pre-made--If you're really ambitious (and not recovering from swine like I am), you can crumble oreos or chocolate graham crackers with butter for a yummy substitution.
• 2 jars of chocolate fudge that can generally be found by the ice cream
• 1 giant Crunch bar
• Rainbow sprinkles
• Whipped cream--I recommend the extra creamy variety because it freezes better

For the simplest celebration dessert ever, choose one of the ice cream flavors and spread a thick layer on the bottom of each pie crust. You should use up a whole half gallon of ice cream. Put the pies in the freezer for 5 minutes to reduce melting.

Then spread a layer of chocolate fudge on each pie. Over that, spread the remaining ice cream flavor, dividing the half gallon equally between the two pies. The pies will appear to be slightly overflowing. Place in freezer for 5 minutes to reduce melting.

While the pies are re-freezing crush the Crunch bar by placing chunks of it in a plastic bag and hitting it into smaller pieces (I used an olive oil bottle).

Take the pies out of the freezer and sprinkle the Crunch bar pieces over the tops of the pies. Then, outline the edges with whipped cream.

On top of the whipped cream, pour a light coating of rainbow sprinkles for additional color. I also

stuck remaining Crunch bar pieces into the whipped cream. The pies are ready to serve!

Admittedly the pie looks rather...ugly. I promise, though, that it was a big hit!

Most importantly, I think Chelsea had a pretty good birthday. Yes, we're growing up, but the wine and cheese is just one of the classy adult things we can participate in now. And, most importantly, even if we are growing older, it's nice to be surrounded by friends and it doesn't exactly suck to be celebrating in our beautiful BU penthouse apartment.

So Happy Birthday to my pretty roommate. I'm pretty thankful that you were born 22 years ago.

What are some ways you celebrate birthdays? Any special traditions or fabulous cakes?