High Summer 2017

Let Them Eat Cake

By Sydney Bender, EDITOR

Everyone needs an infallible birthday cake recipe. Here’s mine: mix together 4 cups cake flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 2 teaspoons baking soda, and 1½ teaspoons sea salt in one bowl, and in another, beat two sticks of butter together with 2¼ cups sugar, 4 teaspoons vanilla, 4 eggs and 1 cup buttermilk. Combine both mixtures, plus a ½ cup of sprinkles, to create a batter. Pour the batter into a buttered cake pan and bake for about 45 minutes at 350°, until golden yellow. It’s foolproof.

Layered in rounds or long, flat sheet cakes, a piece of cake can fix anything. Gluten-free, German chocolate, Boston cream pie (it’s really a cake), or classic yellow cake topped with buttercream . . . there’s a cake for any occasion, even if the occasion is just-because.

But birthdays are the best excuse for cake, and everyone has a birthday.

The origin of celebrating birthdays with cake dates back to Roman times. People didn’t start sticking candles in cakes and then lighting them until—we think—about the 18th century.

But we’re happy they did. I like to sprinkle pink cane sugar and stick long glittery candles on my creations, but no matter how you choose to dress up your confections, cakes give us an opportunity to celebrate life, icing and all.