In my family, birthday cakes are a big deal. They’re not a fancy deal, but we get very excited about them. Always have. They are always chocolate cake, and always homemade.* We like to cut them into shapes and decorate them with coloured icing and liquorice and other sweets.
In the lead-up to May Blossom’s birthday, there has been a lot of cake talk. First of all, her Uncle Superchief (my older brother) offered to make it. He suggested it should be in the shape of a rocketship (he is also leading a campaign to restore the suffix -ship to rockets. When and why did they lose that?) with a cat looking out each window (or porthole? Do rocketships have portholes?)
I liked the idea, but since May Blossom is my daughter I think I should be the one who bakes her first birthday cake. And I absolutely reserve the right to call Uncle Superchief, sobbing, at two am the morning of her birthday because I have dropped/burned/used off eggs/left out the sugar or committed some other cake horror, and accept his generous offer.
So for now, I am the cake maker. Fortunately, I am not a bad baker (thought clearly I am not a tidy baker, as the photograph below illustrates). I made a test cake on Sunday, using a devil’s food cake recipe from one of my cookbooks. I won’t name and shame the book, because the cake wasn’t very nice. It has a lovely texture and would have held up well to shaping and decorating, but it wasn’t anywhere near chocolatey enough. It only had 1/4 cup of cocoa in it, which was probably the problem.
I had to make it one and a half times, too, which didn’t help me feel any more kindly disposed to it. But that wasn’t the recipe’s fault. That was the fault of a kamikaze carton of salt and a packet of chocolate that leapt from my overstuffed kitchen cupboards into the cooling mixture of cocoa and boiling water. And my goodness, that shit went everywhere. It was like the Holy Spirit. It was seriously everywhere.
That cake wasn’t good enough. It tasted boring. It was like a cake would taste if it had been faxed to you. That cake went to live in my parents’ fridge.
The recipe my mum has always used for our birthday cakes is the One Bowl Chocolate Cake from the New York Times Cookbook. It’s great. It’s easy and it tastes like chocolate, which is what you want from chocolate cake. It doesn’t include anything stupid that doesn’t belong in a chocolate cake, like wholemeal flour or beetroot. That was the cake that was often served with a massive dent in it at our childhood parties, not because it didn’t rise correctly in the oven but because Mum used to bake it the night before the party and leave it, covered in a clean tea towel, on the kitchen bench to cool overnight. And that would be where Snail, our ancient, slightly retarded, uni-lung tabbycat would find it and sleep on it overnight.
This is a cake that can stand up to that sort of abuse and still show up to a party the next day, iced and ready to go. That’s the sort of cake I’ll be making for May Blossom. I’m planning a test run of it this weekend, and will update the Cake Files next week.
*Except for my eleventh birthday, when my mum was overseas caring for her sick dad. My dad bought me a Black Forest cake from the patisserie next to my school bus stop. It was amazing. Then he tried to take me and three friends to the Hard Rock Cafe, but being 1989, it was too crowded. We ended up at Darling Harbour. That birthday was about as good as an eleventh birthday in 1989 could get.
I am totally inspired by your monumental Holy Spirit kitchen disaster. I don’t know why. I think it indicates absolute dedication to the craft. Anybody who has a bench covered in dripping cocoa/boiling water should be awarded a kiss for Cake Making Determination and Hard Work.
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Without casting any nasturtians on Gusto, just beware the inbuilt cat bucket list item:
*walk across newly iced chocolate birthday cake that everyone is admiring on MY benchtop*.
It may not have been your birthday, maybe one of your brothers’ when the mighty and ubiquitous Snail also flitted the light fantastic across the cake just before the guests arrived.
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In general, a rocket is an engine that requires no external material (including air, so rockets can operate in space as well as in atmospheres). Newton’s third Law exchanges the rocket’s thrust for its motion, which are equal and opposite.
A rocket is also a name for a missile powered by a rocket engine.
A rocketship is a rocket-powered conveyance for people (or cats, for that matter).
Since cats are peace-loving creatures, their association with rocketships, as opposed to rockets, is logical and understandable.
A porthole is a window in a ship.
To see a cat looking through a rocketship porthole, you may look here:
Hope this helps.
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You’ve done it again! Thank you!
And also thank you to the above comments, especially FantasyLunch, informative and entertaining.
Good luck with the cake. I’d love to see a photo of May Blossom’s hands, wrist deep in said birthday cake, and then close up of hands in chocolate smeared mouth. If you’re up to that assignment!
Xo
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On your birthday this year, a reminder popped up on my work computer saying ‘Jess’s birthday — NB: not a fan of plain white cakes (sponges, butter cakes etc)’.
Will amend to: ‘Jess’s birthday — NB: loves chocolate cakes that taste like chocolate and won’t complain if cake contains the odd cat hair’.
Cxx
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Like many new parents, your instincts are top notch, but your execution is all at sea. You are quite right, the secret of a good chocolate cake is to put most of a packet of cocoa in the mix. But the secret your mother never told you is to take the packet off first. You just can’t put old heads…
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[…] The Cake Files, Part I (lifewithgusto.wordpress.com) […]
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My own worst Holy Spirit Kitchen Disaster involved making the toffee for banoffee pie, but neglecting the tin of condensed milk gently rolling about in a pan of boiling water. When that bad boy boiled dry and the tin of toffee exploded, let me tell you it went everywhere. And I mean *everywhere* – even upstairs, round a corner and BEHIND A DOOR! How?? HOW?!
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[…] was probably either the cat cake or the motorbike cake that Snail slept on. Here he is, crammed onto the kitchen counter, next to the stove — which is on. He was a very […]
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