Before this day is over, I suppose I should finish the cake post I started last night. When we last met, we had all our ingredients prepped and ready for an early morning session in the kitchen. Thankfully my alarm went off, I got my shower, and armed with coffee, I started back in.

You’ll have to pardon the quality of these pictures as it was still dark outside. Get out your participants and your greased springform pan.

Pour the small bowl of sour cream into the bowl of crumble and mix well. Then pour this into your springform and spread it so that the batter comes about two thirds up the sides of the pan.

Next comes the bowl of cream cheese. Plop it on top of the batter and spread until it is smooth.

And now your fruit filling. Remember, you can use just about any jam you want, but I have to put in a good word for lemon curd here. I just feel like it gets a bad rap because of its name. I don’t know who came up with the name lemon curd but there are definitely no curds or curdling involved, unless of course you make it wrong. It’s just a lovely silky, buttery, lemony custard. But enough about lemons, curdled or not. Use what you like and spread it on top of the cream cheese-about half a cup.

Now you get to use that cup of crumble you set aside. Sprinkle it evenly on the other layers.

And of course, top with slivered almonds. Now it’s ready to slide into the oven, which I forgot to mention should have been preheated to 350 before I got in the shower. Oh, and pay no attention to the bottom of my oven.

Give it about forty- five minutes to bake. It will give you time to go wake up your kids and tell them to get dressed about forty-five times. The edges should be nice and brown by then, but the middle will still feel jiggly because of the fruit filling. Pull it out and let it cool a bit or the filling will run all over the place. This will also give the sun time to get up so you can get some decent pictures.

Remove the sides of the pan and dish it up with some nice fruit, or bacon if you need something healthy.

Oh, and of course a cup of coffee.

Here’s a side view of the layers.

So all in all, a good start to a good birthday.