Birthday cakes I've known and loved

Special request: Pineapple Upside-Down Cake for Amanda's birthday.

I grew up in an era when, as part of your birthday festivities, Mom baked cupcakes for the entire class at school and a layer cake, always served with ice cream, to be enjoyed with the family after dinner.

What a lucky Mid-Century girl I am!

We had white cake with white icing, yellow cake with butter brickle frosting, marble cake, angel food cake (Anne's favorite), chocolate cake with old-fashioned boiled icing, chocolate cake with chocolate frosting (Eileen's favorite to this day), Bundt cake, strawberry cake, you name it.

Sometimes the cake was made with a Duncan-Hines or Betty Crocker mix. Only on rare occasions did the frosting come out of a can.

Old-Fashioned Yellow Cake with Chocolate Icing.

My birthday falls in October -- today to be exact! -- and when I got older, I asked my mother to make her mother's recipe for "Apple Jack": a moist, single-layer cake chock-full of sliced apples, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar (giving it a nice crust on top) and topped with a warm cinnamon sauce.

Mom is 88 now, and achy joints and sore feet keep her from doing much standing around the kitchen -- and baking.

My one attempt at making Apple Jack didn't go so well. It's one of those old-timey recipes with cryptic instructions, like: Add milk and flour until the consistency of a thin paste. ...

So, several years ago, I started a new tradition of making a different cake for myself each year and inviting friends and family over to share it.

The timeline, to date:

2006: Carrot Cake Cupcakes and Mini Chocolate Cheesecakes.

2007: Devil's Food Cake with Seven-Minute Icing, an old-favorite made with eggs, sugar and cream of tartar, cooked in a double-boiler and beaten using a mixer until it holds firm peaks.

2008: Old-Fashioned Yellow Cake with Chocolate Icing.

2009: Chocolate-Espresso Cupcakes with a fluffy Cream Cheese Icing flecked with orange zest. This was a practical decision: I've had frosting from a prior batch of these cupcakes in the freezer for months. Time to use it up! Besides, cupcakes are a perfect portion-control treat for someone endlessly battling the bulge.

Yum: Chocolate-Espresso Cupcake with Cream Cheese Icing.

For Robert's special day: Italian Almond Cake With Fresh Raspberries and Whipped Cream.

Maybe it's my advancing age, but I'm kind of sentimental and old-school when it comes to birthday cake.

I purchased a gizmo called a cake leveler a couple years ago, but still it sits in the cupboard with the cake pans. To my way of thinking, the perfect cake need not stand up perfectly straight, like cakes always do on the covers of the glossy food magazines. And the frosting shouldn't look like it was sprayed on.

The perfect birthday cake looks a little tipsy on the plate, its top caving a bit under the weight of so many candles.

I want it to look like something June Cleaver, with her perfectly ironed dress protected by an apron, would make for "the Beav.''

A cake that looks a little precarious on the plate takes me back to the days of cupcakes for the class, and of making a wish and blowing out the candles to the accompaniment of the birthday song sung out of key, followed by applause around the table.

Applause for the birthday girl or boy. And a thick slab of cake!

Comments

[Anne]

Sounds so good! My baking days are over: no oven in my new appartment, quite common in Singapore apparently. Maybe I can deep fry chocolate chip cookie dough in the wok... Happy Birthday

[barbara]

Happy birthday, Margaret! I always have Devil's Food with Seven-Minute Icing and bittersweet chocolate drizzles. John has made it a few times for me, but sometimes I feel sorry for him (he's a good cook, but seven-minute icing can put anyone over the edge, especially when he doesn't particularly care for it)and make it myself. I could not live without my cake leveler, personally. I can't believe we've never discussed this.