Birthday week cake

Of the six people on my team at work, three of us were born on November 17 or 18.  That makes for a pretty epic birthday week.  To celebrate, I made this cake, inspired a bit by my wedding cake, but mostly by my overly ambitions nature.

The bottom layer was a New York style cheesecake with oreo cookie crust made using this recipe.  The recipe didn't call for a water bath, and I didn't use one, but I think I should have.  Or at least cooked it just a tad longer.  My cheesecake ended up deflating, but it still had great flavor.

The second layer was an orange scented cake that I adapted from this recipe.  I literally just subbed the lemon zest and juice for orange.

Between the layers is a pomegranate jelly.  I tried to follow a recipe, but then I bought powdered pectin instead of liquid pectin and was left with 5 freshly juiced pomegranates and really no idea how to turn them into jelly.  (For reference, juicing 5 pomegranates by hand is NOT something I recommend.) In the end, I ended up following the recipe for raspberry jam in the pectin box, but cut in half, and without actually canning it.  Basically, I dumped sugar, juice, water and chemical powder in a pot, whisked as if my life depended on it for about 5 minutes, and hoped for the best.  Surprisingly, it turned out.

To top it all off, I made a simple chocolate ganache.  I didn't put any liquor in mine, but I think that a little triple sec or some other orange extract could have been a great way to tie all the flavors together.  When the ganache was still wet, I sprinkled the top with pomegranate seeds.  Beautiful and tasty!