Birthday Cake
Making my own has become somewhat of a personal tradition
I made the wrong birthday cake. But, really, is any birthday cake wrong?
Last year around this time, I found a really good recipe from Sugar Spun Run. I loved the heartier, All-Purpose flour vanilla cake and buttery chocolate frosting, made of real chocolate, and looked forward to taking a slice for myself every day.
For some reason, I forgot to save the recipe, probably figuring that I could easily find it again.
Wrong.
There’s a difference between birthday cake and vanilla cake when doing a Google search.
I mistakenly looked up birthday cake, saw Sugar Spun Run, and went for her “Best Birthday Cake Recipe,” which I made with fluffier, lighter cake flour, and “Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting,” made with cocoa powder.
It is indeed lighter and fluffier, almost too light and fluffy. I like my cakes (and breads and scones and muffins) heavy, dense, craggy, and the opposite of light and fluffy. I need some meat to the bones, even in my desserts.
As much as I wanted to alternate flour and buttermilk in the stand mixer, I followed the instructions to a T — risking finger lock — and stirred in portions by hand, careful not to over-mix.
But psssst, you can totally do this in the stand mixer. Just don’t mix too long in between flour and buttermilk additions. It works for my pumpkin bread.
The heavy, tangy frosting is almost too overbearing.
I am also not a frosting first person.
This time, after the fact, I printed out her Vanilla Cake and semi-sweet chocolate buttercream frosting recipes for next year, if there is a next year. I don’t plan on going anywhere but to the kitchen to enjoy my slice for the night.
It’s a great cake for everyone else. Just not me.
And not because I failed to completely blend the cream cheese into the cocoa/butter.
I ended up giving away half to our neighbor friends, the ones with two kids and a major sweet tooth. There’s no way in hell Ed and I can polish off a triple-layer cake in a week (going to Vegas, remember). I can always freeze the leftovers too, or leave for our son, who is coming here from WA to house-/dog-sit.
I know it sounds pathetic to bake my own cake, but it works for me. I wished I’d known I could do this earlier in my life. Imagine all the amazing cake recipes I could’ve tried out on myself and my friends, when they were around.
My parents always bought me frilly white cake, because I was a girl, no matter how many times I begged them for chocolate. When my brother turned one in Japan, he got what looked to me like a homemade chocolate sheet cake. I wanted that to be my cake so badly.
Had I known I could make my own cakes from scratch, I would’ve made my own damned chocolate cake and told my parents with every bite to go fuck themselves.
Bonus tip: I found out from a professional cake baker that you can put your frosted, layered cakes in the refrigerator without covering it. The frosting acts like a barrier. Cool.
