A heartfelt manifesto for the return of the made-with-love, made-at-home, perfectly imperfect birthday cake.
Is there anything more genuine than a homemade birthday cake? Someone going through the trouble of dragging out bowls and spoons and messing up thei rkitchen to celebrate the day of your birht is, in my book, the sincerest form of love.
In recent years, the standards for "homemade" birthday cakes have risen to impossible heights. If you believe Instagram and Pinterest, a cake isn't a cake unless it's six layers high, draped in pastel fondant and dotted with gum-paste peonies. It's too much pressure, frankly, and takes all the fun out of bithday baking.
I was lucky to grow up in a home that treasured homemade birthday cakes. The cakes of my childhood were not "Pin-worthy" or "Instagrammable," yet I remember almost every one of them. Sometimes they were several layers high, sometimes just a single. And they were always decorated in a way that screamed "effort."
For my third birthday, my mother spelled "three" in red-hots. And then there were the candles. My parents were resourceful. I suppose that's why most of the candles atop my childhood birthday cakes were pillar candles - the kind you see on dinner tables or in disaster relief kits. I can imagine the exchange between my Mom and Dad: "Oh darn I forgot to buy birthday candles again!"
"Oh please, we've got candles," my Dad would say. "These are more elegant anyway."
For your next loved one's birthday, make them a homemade cake. Drag out the bowls and spoons, get messy, and embrace the imperfection of it all.
This recipe is easy as it gets. It's a flopsy-mopsy sort of cake you can dress up or down. Or skip the layering and bake it in a 9x14-inch casserole dish instead. It's so divinely delicious, no one will mind the presentation.
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