A beautiful layered cake covered with candles is the perfect way to celebrate a birthday. The only question is: Yellow or chocolate? Oh, and which flavor frosting?

This recipe for Everyone's Favorite Birthday Cake (recently featured on The Martha Stewart Show) answers both questions. It's moist yellow cake with just a hint of cinnamon iced with chocolate cream cheese frosting. This crowd-pleasing cake doesn't just taste good, it looks quite pretty, too.

Of course, you would never in a million years guess it just by looking at her, but Martha Stewart celebrated her 70th birthday this August. Her friend, the ever-talented Darcy Miller (who is Celebrations Expert for The Martha Stewart Show on Hallmark Channel and Editorial Director of Martha Stewart Weddings), threw an intimate birthday party for Martha back in July and, as you would expect, the decorations, menu, and favors were absolutely fabulous. After all, this was a celebration for the Domestic Goddess and Queen of Party Planning herself -- nothing could be too perfect.

Darcy shared her amazing DIY decorating ideas on The Martha Stewart Show (airing later today). But we've got a sneak peek now. Let's take a look:

Tonight's big challenge on Top Chef Masters was seemingly impossible. The chefs were asked to cook for the contestants of The Biggest Loser and prepare lower-calorie versions of their favorite foods -- MUCH lower calorie. 

From deep-dish pizza to bacon cheeseburgers, many of the individual favorites had 2,000-3,000 calories each. The chefs were grouped into two teams and tasked with creating a day's worth of meals from the favorites plus dessert for under 1,500 calories total. It kind of made the cooking with bugs task from last week seem easy.

The Stir is celebrating our First Birthday tomorrow, March 15, and oh how we've grown! Usually when someone has a birthday, they are the one who gets all the cool gifts (except for the three crappy ones that always get returned or regifted), but here at The Stir, we're shaking things up.

To thank you, our loyal readers, for helping us reach our one-year milestone, we're going to share the birthday love. Don't feel embarrassed you didn't get us anything -- all we’ve ever wanted has been your comments and support, and you’ve blown us away.

Now’s our chance to return the sentiment and shower you with LOTS of presents. Yay!

Cosmos, margaritas, and of course, straight-up champagne are always delicious, go-to celebratory libations. But this is no ordinary celebration we are talking about here. Tomorrow, March 15, The Stir is celebrating our First Birthday! So we wanted to do something a little jazzier and unique.

That's why we tasked authors of the new book DIY Cocktails: A Simple Guide to Creating Your Own Signature Drinks Marcia Simmons and Jonas Halpren of DrinkoftheWeek.com with dreaming up a signature sip in honor of our big day and our readers!

So, without further ado, the recipe for The Stir Tropical Sparkler, a cocktail that will taste like you're celebrating a birthday on an island vacation, without ever having to leave home ...  

Imagine this: It's your kid's birthday, a particularly special one. You present her cake, hand her a wand, and ask her to wave it ... and Tinkerbell goes flying around the cake, leaving a trail of pixie dust behind.

Sounds pretty cool? It may someday be coming to a birthday party near you. Disney has patented a kind of interactive cake, which has a pico-projector (a kind of tiny laser projector) inside. It treats the surface of the a cake as a screen on which it projects a moving image, and can immediately react to changes to the surface of the cake. For example, if you cut a slice where an image of a lake appears, it can sense that and create an image of a waterfall where the lake was.

Sensors inside can detect motion outside the cake with specially coded props or utensils, triggering Tink's flight or, say, Lighting McQueen zooming away. And the processor inside can also make decorations move.

Three of my best friends' birthdays are between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, so I've heard all of the complaints on having a December birthday -- getting shanked on gifts, Christmas/birthday party combos, receiving the reject holiday presents, no one coming to your party because it's cold ....

I admit, December babies have it rough, but let's look at the eggnog glass half full ... it is the holidays, I mean, your birthday. Instead of cursing your mother for not planning her conception out with a bit more calculation, check out these 15 reasons why December birthdays don't suck:

There seems to be some confusion of late as to whether it's appropriate to bring your own birthday cake to a restaurant. Some think it's rude and annoying; others think customers should be able to celebrate their birthdays however they want -- and if that means an outside cake, then so be it.

I think it's a perfectly acceptable practice as long as you follow these five rules of bring your own birthday cake etiquette.