Cakes are Important

It was a tradition in my family growing up that we should have a classic birthday cake: yellow cake with a special family recipe chocolate frosting. These cakes were generally decorated by my father's steady, even hand, with whatever image I happened to be infatuated with that year. One year it was Kermit the frog, another my favorite teddy bear. As I grew to be a teenager I had different types of cake, ice cream cakes, bakery bought, and brownie sundaes lured me away from this tradition. A few years ago we returned to the tradition and wondered why we had ever strayed.

In college I began to bake cakes for some of my friends on their birthdays (depending on how busy the term was). I baked my first red velvet cake from scratch (before I'd ever even tasted one) for a friend of mine who had grown up in Texas. The cake turned out fantastically and my friend's gratitude inspired me to make it a bit of a tradition.

Baking a cake can be intimidating and with the popularity of cupcakes it's somewhat of a rarity these days. While cupcakes are charming, they just cannot compete with the commanding presence of a layer cake. I recently baked an alternating four layer raspberry and dark chocolate cake. When sliced, the contrast of the pink and brown was striking in a way that a cupcake could never be.

Next month I will take on my greatest cake challenge of all: baking the wedding cake of a dear friend. The question I have been asked most is "Aren't you afraid?" The answer to that is that fear had never occurred to me until asked. I've got resources and some experience and I trust that my friend would not have asked me to take on this task without first believing.

Last week I received a classic cake with twenty-five candles on it. It was delicious as ever but I've decided that this is the last year it's probably safe to put the right number of candles on it!