Birth Day Cake

When I was growing up we never bought birthday cakes, we always made them from scratch. Usually "we" was me and my dad. I think making birthday cakes was sort of our first cooking projects that we'd do together. I cook much more than my siblings, although my parents got all of us involved in cooking from a young age. I enjoyed it more I think so I'd volunteer for extra cooking on top of when one of us would get conscripted into helping with dinner.

Anyway so birthday cake was one of those things that my dad and I would do together. And usually we would make a chocolate cake recipe that he learned from his mother (who died when I was 8). So for me making birthday cakes is the norm and it reminds me of home and growing up and all those sorts of happy memories.

Cooper's birthday is tomorrow and he requested a lemon and poppyseed cake. I knew my dad had a good recipe for that sort of cake so I looked through his recipe folder (all online of course because we're cool that way). Eventually I found the recipe (his organization system sometimes escapes me) and after having to go to like 4 different grocery stores (I told you I haven't baked in a while, I needed things like cake flour which for some reason the first store didn't have, then we had to go get the good lemon curd from trader joes, and then we got home and realized we needed more butter for the frosting, oh and a sifter).

Making the cake brought back so many memories, not so much with this exact recipe but it shares a lot of things with our traditional birthday cake. First, I'm using my dad's old KitchenAid, the one he's had since the 80s and we always used growing up. He has a new one and I'm "storing" this one for him.

It also made me remember the two steps I always hate doing and usually out source to my dad and this time outsourced to cooper. The first is greasing and lining the pan. It's pretty simple, just cut out some parchment paper for the bottom of the pan and butter the whole thing so it cake doesn't stick. It's simple but for some reason I always hated that step as a kid and that just stuck with me.

The second is the stupid pre-sifting of the cake flour. You're supposed to sift some flour, then measure out your amount and then sift all the dry ingredients together. The problem is always trying to get the extra pre-sifted flour back into the tiny box the cake flour lives in without getting it everywhere. Somehow I managed to pre-sift just the right amount and didn't have to put any back. That never happens, it must be a birthday miracle.

Large bowl of flour, tiny box opening

Following my dad's recipes is always fun because he takes a recipe but then he annotates it which is pretty helpful. Especially since it's been a while since I've made this cake or the frosting. The cake was easy but the frosting can be tricky sometimes. It's the neoclassic buttercream recipe from the Cake Bible . Seriously, if you're going to make buttercream use this recipe, it's amazing. You can add lemon curd for lemon frosting, or baker's chocolate and a shot of espresso for the best chocolate buttercream you've ever had.  It can be a little bit finicky if you haven't made it a 100 times so I found myself lecturing cooper (who was in the living room) about technique as I worked. And of course I kept texting my dad with questions, who luckily knew exactly what I was asking and the best answer (we've made this a lot, did I mention that?). So it came out great. If you are making this frosting the main trick is how to work with the corn syrup and mostly the key is to just immerse whatever had corn syrup on it in boiling hot water immediately for easy cleaning. Otherwise it'll turn into cement on your cooking implements.

The cake turned out great. And the frosting did too.

Prepared or storage

I've wrapped up the cakes and frosting and I'm keeping them in the fridge to assemble on the actual birthday day.

Cooper was totally into the cake, which I thought was funny. Maybe it's just because we always buy cakes now but he seemed very impressed at my baking prowess. I'm glad he likes the cake because this is part of what my dad is making for the wedding. My dad is going to make our traditional chocolate cake as our wedding cake, and do a couple of small poppyseed lemon cakes for other flavors for the non-chocolate eaters. I was so touched when my dad offered to make the cake for us. He's done it before (I've helped him in fact), make a wedding cake that is. He's got all the rounds and the tiers. So we'll have a round tiered cake to display and some sheet cakes in the back for more caking. It'll be great since it's the cake of my childhood and from my grandma's recipe etc. So yeah, birthday cake means a lot of me. And I have a lot of things to say about it apparently haha.