On birthdays, everyone deserves a homemade cake.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html



When I lie in bed at 2 a.m., listening to the lilting sounds of the garbage truck outside my window, I contemplate frosted cakes. I ponder room-temperature eggs and carefully measured flour. I mull glistening seven-minute frosting. I resist the urge to leap from bed and whip up a 1-2-3 yellow cake from my fudge-stained, dogeared "Joy of Cooking."

While there is an argument to be made for the aesthetic pleasures of a bakery cake — all those gorgeous piped roses and fondant images of Hello Kitty so perfect that they are probably copyright infringement — there is really nothing better than a homemade cake. Even if the layers are lopsided, the frosting a bit gritty or thickly plastered to camouflage baking sins, homemade cakes are generally moister, denser and dreamier than their bakery brethren.

Further, home-baked cakes strike a blow against the modern industrialization of children's birthday parties, in which 20 6-year-olds are dragooned to a gym, led around tumbling mats by grim-faced instructors for $45 a head, then sent home with goody bags filled with embarrassingly expensive electronic doodads

snip...

My favorite layer cakes remain the trusted versions from "Joy of Cooking." I have tried nearly every yellow, chocolate and white cake in the thing and have always found them fairly foolproof. I recommend the Buttermilk Layer Cake for children and adults alike, because it does a tangy tango with any chocolate frosting you choose and is pretty.

Final tips: Watch your oven — overbaking kills the easiest cakes. Use a heavy hand when greasing your pans. Offer ice cream on the side. When asked where you got the cake, gloat.

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Actually, I prefer the 1-2-3 Yellow Cake, but it requires whipped egg whites and is more difficult that the Buttermilk Layer. The Chocolate Satin frosting is divine.

This was a fun article for me (yes, I am just getting around to reading the Sunday paper, grrrr) because the author uses the same cookbook that I do, trusty old Joy of Cooking. But it is my favorite for baking, I guess because the recipes are solid, it is comprehensive, and it is simple enough for me, a baking neophyte, to follow.

Not Yellow Cake.

I loved the Joy of Cooking cake recipes when I lived at a lower altitude. Now they come out grainy and dry so I use an adapted one.

I wish Mr. P wasn't getting on my case so much about baking. He's gained a bit of a tum, and claims to have no self-control, so I'm not to make sweets anymore.

Baking needs to be a special occasion for me, too. But I love to bake, and a homemade birthday cake is really special.

and I ate Chinese takeout and had a slice of storebought cake.

Next year I will bake myself an apple cake, give the leftovers to my neighbors.

mmmmmmmm apple cake :9

but you're certainly welcome to stop buy for a slab or two.

unless you live up on the Reservation at 4 corners

course, I drive FAST zoooooommmmmmmmmmmmm


:rofl: