A history of the ones I have made, anyway…with a quick shout-out to my dad for making me a Barbie cake—the kind where there is an actual Barbie there and the cake and frosting make a dress on/around her—one year. What a dad!
I think the first birthday cake I ever made, not from a box, was for Justin, the first summer we were dating. Back then, I said “I like baking,” but most of my baking was really simple. Boxed brownies and cakes, 4-ingredient meringue cookies, and occasional ventures into creative-baking-pinterestland like this.
So, taking on a homemade angel food cake was a little bit scary. Justin had told me that he only likes it from scratch, and “plain”: no icing and no flavorings other than vanilla. He also warned me that angel food cake requires some skill. What he left unsaid, but I sensed, was that making his birthday cake was a weed-out girlfriend milestone. If I didn’t at least make a concerted effort, it might be a dealbreaker. I already knew I wanted to marry this guy, so I needed the cake to be perfect.
Guess what? It was! I was nervous the whole time. I read the recipe at least a dozen times to make sure I knew what was coming, what things were “supposed to” look like. Folding the flour into the meringue probably took me ten full minutes. But one reason baking suits me well is because I’m a rule follower; with baking, if the recipe is well written and you follow it closely, you should get good results; I take pleasure in meticulously prepping ingredients and adhering exactly to directions. Voila!
Needless to say, Justin kept me around, and I’ve made him eight more angel food birthday cakes since then. (Unfortunately, I have no photographic evidence of any of them.) I have convinced him that almond extract deserves a place in the cake, and I’ve even discovered an icing (lemon glaze) he dubs worthy of drizzling over it sometimes. I’m also a lot less nervous (and faster) about getting it made each time. Plus I have a stand mixer now. (:
Edited to add: You can now find a picture of one of Justin’s birthday angel food cakes, homemade by yours truly, in this post!
Justin made me birthday cakes at least a couple of times in our early years. He definitely bought me a “birthday cake” shot on my 21st birthday, shortly after he missed my birthday party, because he was at Oktoberfest with his friends, and I was technically still only 20, having boxed cake and watching Disney movies with my own friends in my apartment. These things go this way sometimes.
More recently, I make my own birthday cake (like this) or other dessert of some kind, because the physical baking is as fun and relaxing for me as the end product. Happy birthday to me!
This past year, I treated myself to birthday raspberry soufflé with créme anglaise, because soufflé is actually my very favorite dessert ever, and earlier in the year I had finally traversed into making my own. The crunch on the edges, the fluff in the middle, the butter (oh, the butter!)…YUM.
However. The downside of having birthday soufflé instead of birthday cake, is that there was no leftover birthday cake to have for breakfast the next morning—a tradition that Justin has scoffed at since the beginning, but that I was honestly sad to have to skip this year. I will reconsider next year.
Enter children.
Miryam’s first birthday was celebrated with a family-only party at my parents’ house, where we were living at the time. I made a yellow cake with pink strawberry frosting. I had limited baking pan options, so instead of baking a separate small “smash cake” for the birthday baby, I made a regular round cake and cut a small circle from the middle of it to frost separately and serve her. So from one regular round cake I ended up with essentially a bundt cake and a smash cake. That was actually one of the best-tasting cakes I’ve ever made. The cake base was the “magnificent moist golden cake” from this cookbook.
I remember my grandma asking me, “What did you put in the cake?”
“Umm…butter, sugar, eggs, flour, vanilla…”
“Oh, you didn’t make it from a box! No wonder it tastes so good.”
For serious, y’all.
Oh, and Miryam actually blew out her own candle at her first birthday party. Everyone was amazed and surprised. What a baby!
Miryam’s second birthday was celebrated twice. First in Oklahoma in conjunction with Luke’s baptism. Oklahoma family and godparents got a two-in-one with us. That was the only store-bought birthday cake I’ve ever served. Under the circumstances, the convenience was worth it. Luke was baptized at the Catholic student center on a college campus, and the party was also there right afterwards, so we just left the leftover cake in the kitchen, knowing it would be enjoyed by students later. It wouldn’t have lasted for the 5-hour trip home, anyway.
The second party was at my parents’ house again. Miryam was into trains at the time, so I got the “great idea” to make her a train cake. I borrowed a cake book from my mom’s friend and set to work.
OMG THIS CAKE. I was so ambitious. I made two flavors of cake and 3 colors of frosting. It looked pretty dang amazing by the time it was done, and Miryam loved it, but boy was it a pain to get done.
When I finished, I distinctly remember having these two thoughts:
“When Miryam is a teenager, if she ever dramatically claims I don’t love her for whatever reason, I will just whip out a photo of this cake as proof that Yes I do!”
and
“I am never making a cake like this again.”
Stay tuned. I got to eat those words (and more train cake) last month.
Luke’s first birthday was the first party we threw at our first house we bought. Mostly family, a few close friends. I made him a cake in the shape of the number 1. It turned out recognizable, cute, yummy. From the edge pieces, carved away from the 1 shape, of the 9×13 cakes I’d stacked up, I constructed a small smash cake for him, too. He did a satisfying number on that little cake. He’s always been the most photogenic and “hammy” one of our family, I must admit. Quite charmingly adorable. And I didn’t take a single photo at that birthday party. I’m sure I must have asked someone to snap picture of the cake and the messy smashing, but I don’t remember who it was, and/or he or she doesn’t remember where those pictures ended up between phone upgrades and online storage. *sigh*
For Miryam’s third birthday, I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, and she said “chocolate mint,” which is her go-to ice cream. Great choice, dear one! That’s a flavor, not a shape; I can definitely make that happen with minimal stress! I had just made a “peppermint mocha” cake for a Christmas party a couple months before, so I simply modified that by leaving out the coffee component and tinting the frosting a minty green. It was absolutely a hit.
By Luke’s second birthday, we had moved to Texas again, and Luke wasn’t crazy about any of our new friends enough to make a party that would be fun and not overwhelming for him here, so instead, we had an early party at my parents’ house again while we were visiting a few weeks before his birthday. By now, I knew this kid loved chocolate, so I made him a round chocolate cake with blue vanilla frosting and a chocolate chip 2 on top. He didn’t know I’d spent literally seven times the effort on his sister’s Second Birthday cake. He didn’t need to know. He was perfectly happy with what I gave him.
Miryam’s fourth birthday was the biggest birthday party I’ve hosted yet. We’d had just enough more time here to make friend-families that both she and I wanted to invite, plus she wanted to invite her entire preschool class. I vetoed the latter idea, but I did let her invite six kids from school, including their parents and siblings (taking a cue from the two school-friend parties we’d been invited to). I waited to send invitations until less than 2 weeks before the party, hoping some people would have plans already and that would externally limit guest numbers.
Alas. 100% of invitees accepted the invitation. There were a few last-minute cancellations, but thank goodness the weather was lovely and we could send half the party to the backyard!
Anyway, I’d received a tiered-cake baking pan set for Christmas that I wanted to try. I don’t remember if it was Miryam’s idea or mine to theme the party “rainbows and unicorns,” but on that note, I decided to make each tier a double layer, and color each individual layer separately so that the inside of the cake had rainbow stripes. I do remember for sure that Miryam’s only request regarding the cake was that it be pink and purple. She was actually a little disappointed when I showed her the baked cake layers before assembly.
“But I wanted a pink and purple cake!”
“Yes, sweetie, the frosting will be pink and purple for the outside, but inside it will be like a rainbow.” Slight deja vu: me taking a somewhat complicated (for my skill level) idea and running with it, even though my daughter did not even request it.
Well, let me tell you, it turned out beautiful and delicious. I don’t remember which yellow cake recipe I was using, but I went back to my trusty strawberry frosting, which makes everything taste as magical as a unicorn. The plus side of the huge amount of people at the party is that a huge amount of people got to admire my handiwork and flatter my vanity. Lol. To check my vanity, however, the red and orange top layers of the cake were disgusting. I had made them gluten free, for the benefit (intended benefit, that is) of some of our friends. Mistake. Gluten free cake (from a box mix—I wouldn’t have known where to start otherwise) is not yummy. Like, it would be better to just not eat cake than to eat that cake I made. Live and learn.
Luke’s third birthday was last month. Spoiler alert: I made him another train cake. This kid is OBSESSED with trains. Some 3 year olds know the difference between a backhoe loader and a bulldozer (other kids: “diggers!”); some 3 year olds know the difference between an apatosaurus and a triceratops (other kids: “dinosaurs!”); my 3 year old knows the difference between a monorail and a steam locomotive (other kids: “trains!”). It’s cool how they specialize in their interests. But like, if I made Miryam a train cake when she kind of liked trains….it would be seriously unfair parenting to not make Luke a train cake when he LOVES. TRAINS. as much as he does.
I’ve made a lot more cakes since the first train cake, so I’m more comfortable with it: the baking, the cutting, the assembly and frosting. I also “toned it down a bit” by sticking to one type of cake and one color of frosting. To my advantage, Luke went around announcing, “My birthday is gonna be BLUE!” for a couple of weeks before the party, which made it easy to pick white flavors and add blue food coloring. I also used Oreos for the train’s wheels, instead of baking chocolate chip cookies from scratch for the wheels, on Justin’s oh-so-brilliant suggestion. However, I decided to make macarons for the first time for his party—because the cake wasn’t hard enough this time I guess—as a way tastier alternative for our gluten free guests. Macarons are the kids’ favorite splurge-treat from the farmers market down here. Discovering I can make my own was extremely gratifying. And look how cute, if asymmetrical:
Anyway, the blue birthday probably deserves its own whole post someday. If only blue ketchup was still a thing, you know?
Speaking of blue, I have a bonus birthday cake to share: Mary’s birthday cake, i.e. a cake for a Feast of the Nativity of Mary party we had at church. That was my first time attempting to temper and pipe chocolate, which didn’t go quite flawlessly, but which did look quite nice in the end, if I may so compliment myself.
And to end, I will share a conversation my sister had with her son, my nephew, because it was so sweet (and hilarious) of him and it just fits so well on this post:
Nephew: Can I have my birthday party at Aunt Elizabeth’s next year?
Sister: Why do you want to have it there?
Nephew: The cake.
Tell me in the comments: What was the best birthday cake you ever had?