The Birthday Cake as a Milepost

SAMUEL, my 10-year-old, told me recently that one of his earliest memories was the birthday cake I made when he was 3. It was a snowman cake, for his snow-theme party. Three single layers cut into proportionate circles and frosted in stiff, white fondant icing; black gumdrop eyes and mouth; a striped scarf made by twisting together red and black shoestring licorice and a traditional carrot nose. It was quite a cake — especially for me, an advanced-beginner baker at best. So when Samuel told me he remembered it, I was proud — for the three seconds before he explained, "I remember it was scary."Well, at least he remembers it. Clearly, so do I. And I’ve found that most of the women I know, whether infrequent bakers or those who bake at the drop of a hat, mix-users or only-from-scratch types, remember the cakes they’ve baked, vividly. You know the way clothing can function in memory, outfitting important events? Well, I think cakes we’ve baked make for equally rich, if not richer, recollection. Tastes, decorations, adventures or ordeals come flooding back, coalescing around the cakes’ reasons for being — the people they were baked for and their landmark celebrations. Especially children.Not that we don’t bake cakes for adults, too. And isn’t it a lovely thing to see your father beaming like a child as his lighted cake is borne to him? But it’s a different experience setting out not merely to please but to delight a child with a cake that only you can make, one that can find you rolling up your sleeves and becoming a cake wrangler, determined to make that firehouse, caterpillar or Pokémon concoction. Why? Or, as I’ve asked myself when half the cake sticks to the pan, What could I have been thinking?There is an irresistible charm to these flight-of-fancy cakes, and fueling children’s imaginative rides in the early years is part of a parent’s job. But I think the real reason we bake far-fetched cakes is because we hear in our children’s birthday-cake requests, whether spoken or not, this: "You can do it. You’re Mom."So we bake and risk the burning, the falling and the crumbling, trying to meet our kids’ cake expectations. I’ve seen a mother struggling over caterpillar cake segments baked in bundt pans. And another fretting terribly as the gel lettering melted off the cake, making it look like one of Dalí’s surreal desert clocks.Then there’s the weird tale my friend Stina told me about a cake that is apparently a contemporary rite of passage for mothers of pre-tween girls. It’s a Barbie cake, more specifically, a Barbie-upright-in-her-bouffant-skirt cake. Using a trademarked pan, you bake the skirt, frost it (prom-pink is good) and then decorate it with edible beading, sequins or tulle. Then you’ve got to get the damsel in the dress, lowering her into the waist of the skirt-cake. But Barbie is liable to slide down past her waist, to where the cake hits her just below the bust — Maternity Barbie! Or, she might slide further, descending into the crumbling pastel volcano that is your cake, until finally, horribly, Barbie is entombed.At least now, thanks to the blogosphere, mothers have a place to commiserate and virtually share their cake triumphs and disasters. One of my favorite online sightings is a photo of a pirate treasure chest cake, spilling over with jewels, taken seconds before the birthday boy pilfered it, sending it, plundered, to the floor. The baker couldn’t bear to post the “after” shot, but she did have one of herself, cringing.I see how this royal cake-baking treatment might be perceived as another symptom of our superindulgent, competitive parenting. It shows how the ante has been upped for birthday cakes — just as for toys, camps, tutors, clothes and college. But cake baking as event or proving ground is nothing new. It’s been going on in this country since the second half of the 19th century, at least, when superior baking powders became more widely available. Cake baking reached its lofty heights with the popularization of the cake mix after World War II. Cake mixes were, and continue to be, a godsend for anyone who doesn’t want to sift flour, measure cocoa and fold in egg whites. And boxed-cake memories for birthday boys and girls are, in the end, just as sweet. Just ask my friend Alice.Alice’s mother wasn’t much of a cook, let alone a baker. She had given up her career as a chemist in the 1950s to have a family. So for Alice’s birthday, she would take her on a ceremonious trip to the supermarket where Alice would get to pick the Duncan Hines mix of her choice. Back home, they’d prepare it together. The best part was when Alice’s mother would pour some of the batter into a doll-sized pan.Those cake-baking times are at the heart of why Alice is the passionate, expert and generous baker she is today and why she bakes with Annie, her 12-year-old, every chance she gets.Ideas of mothering are an essential part of birthday cake ingredients. (More dads are baking cakes these days, but for now, birthday-cake culture still mostly revolves around mothers.) My own mother made a lot of spice cakes when I was growing up, simple rectangles with brown cinnamon frosting and raisins spelling “Happy Birthday” and our names. These were the first kind of cakes I baked for my own children. Then I set the bar higher. Maybe it was leaving New York City, moving to the suburbs and searching for the Martha within. But when my boys started toddling, their cakes also reached developmental milestones. Henry’s Pokémon cake was one of these.As with Sam’s snowman cake, here, too, I thought I’d achieved something nifty. Henry, my oldest, turning 6, was a Pokémon fanatic having a July swim party. So I came up with a swimming pool cake surrounded by Pokémon characters. I scavenged for the hard-to-find miniature critters, even soliciting other mothers for some of their kids’ stash. I made chlorine-water-colored Jell-O and a cookie diving board, then frosted and arranged the scene. Henry was appreciative. But he let me know at the time — and has ever since — that I’d put the "earth" Pokémon in the pool and the "water" Pokémon on dry land.Nowadays, my boys don’t ask a lot from me in the birthday cake department. Pretty much anything chocolate and frosted will do. Which is a little bittersweet for me, but just a little. Because the cakes I have baked live on, preserved in family lore, and in the lingering, ever-delicious memories of my children, round-faced, candlelit and filled with wishing.