Quest for Cake

A birthday celebration calls for a birthday cake and gifts. As far as I’m concerned, forget about the gifts, but keep the cake.

My love affair with birthday cakes began when I was four. Each morning on his way to work, my Uncle Eddie drove his two aunts and my mom to their jobs and me to nursery school located in the old Arsenal Bath House in Lawrenceville, a short distance from the Doughboy statue. On my fourth birthday, Aunt Agnes handed me a big white box tied with string. When I lifted the lid and peered inside, I saw a magnificent white cake topped with a circle of tiny dolls, each one clutching a ribbon attached to a pole in the center. All of that lovely drama was perched on a carpet of icing.

To this day, I have never forgotten the blissful memory of that cake. I believe that this was the source of my grand obsession with birthday cakes.

There were early signs that I was not willing to let this “cake thing” go. My mother worked for a major food service company on Smallman Street in the Strip District and she would occasionally bring home obsolete office forms for me to use as scratch paper. Having a one-track mind, I whiled away my free time by drawing endless sketches of birthday cakes in assorted shapes and sizes. I never tired of this mundane subject. Of course, the only thing better than drawing birthday cakes is eating them.

That leads to a question: Why this fascination with birthday cakes, as opposed to other cakes? Birthday cakes, like fruitcake, enjoy a mediocre reputation. They are considered necessary for a proper celebration, with more attention given to function over form. The worst of birthday cakes loses its classification as food and may be described as ordinary and devoid of personality; the best of them creates an unforgettable experience of sensory sublimity.

One outstanding birthday cake memory arises from the old Market Square’s Rhea’s Bakery. Their cheerful green and white baked goods boxes reminded you of aluminum awnings on houses. The Rhea’s cake I’m recalling was in honor of my 16th year and was entirely white, including flowers, leaves, and scrolls. The monochromatic theme of white frosting was accompanied by the heady fragrance of rich French vanilla.

During my college years, I took the 73 Highland Park bus which stopped at Penn and Highland avenues, a busy intersection back then with many businesses, such as the Mansmann’s Department Store and McIntyre’s Bakery, nearby. I became friends with a regular passenger who worked at McIntyre’s. To pass the time while waiting, we would sometimes share food fantasies. I confessed to her that my dream would be to eat my way out of a room filled with peanut butter cups covered with icing roses. The next day as she sat next to me, she gave me a small bag which contained a chocolate peanut butter cup topped with an enormous pink buttercream rose. If that wasn’t heaven, it came really close.

Since I enjoyed birthday cakes so much and even took great delight in designing them, I once took the plunge and signed up for a cake decorating class at a local craft store. If you have ever watched a professional decorate a cake, it seems to require little effort or skill. I thought that if I could only make my own roses, then I would be set for life.

I could not have been more wrong. There is more to making floral designs on a cake than just squeezing an icing bag. The consistency of the icing has to be just right or the product can be too runny or too thick. I also discovered that my wimpy hands didn’t have enough strength to squeeze the icing bag so that the icing would flow smoothly through the decorating tip. Somehow, my icing was never right, and usually too thick, so that either the icing bag would burst or the decorating tip would fly off the end of the bag.

The clean-up afterward was challenging, with shortening and butter everywhere, which were hard to remove. Also, creating a rose from buttercream was not “a piece of cake.” These drawbacks ended my mission of mastering the art of cake decorating.

Meanwhile, as my birthday cake fixation remained, neighborhood bakeries were on the wane. One could buy a basic birthday cake at the local chain grocery store, but it looked and tasted anonymous and lacked personality. So, a quest for the holy grail of birthday cakes began.

As I set my standards, certain questions arose pertaining to criteria. What defines a good birthday cake? For my birthday, I cannot have too much of a good thing; therefore, lots of icing should be de rigueur. When I entertain and serve cake for dessert, I stare with disdain at those plates that sail back to the kitchen afterwards with the cake eaten but the icing sensibly scraped to the side. Those people, in my book, just do not know how to enjoy life.

Additionally, the icing on the cake must be rich and creamy. Fondant icing with its smooth texture and subtle flavor is not for me. It doesn’t make enough fuss and one doesn’t feel too sinful eating it.

The cake must have a good balance of flavor and texture, being somewhat moist and not a bland-tasting sponge covered with greasy, powdered sugar icing.

Last, the cake’s design should be beautiful to behold. Many bakeries, you may have noticed, offer a plethora of modern cake designs with photographs, animals, beach scenes or even, of all things, a hamburger. If I want to eat a hamburger, I’ll eat a hamburger and not a cake that looks like one. My ideal birthday cake design adheres to the traditional floral format but is a little over the top, if I might say, with the addition of an excessive amount of flowers, especially roses.

As I passed the age of 49 and began to fall more deeply into my birthday cake addiction, I needed to locate a source for the definitive model. Which bakery could rise to this challenge? While visiting New York City several years ago, I noticed a small bakery named Cupcake Cafe. Inside, several refrigerated cases held a variety of baked goods, including gorgeous cupcakes that looked like miniature birthday cakes. I sat down at one of their tables and, after trying a sample, I found the cake portion to be divine. It was sweet, moist, delicately flavored and covered with rich buttercream icing. You could actually taste the butter in each bite. They also had exquisitely decorated birthday cakes for sale, and lavish floral designs were their specialty. I lusted for one with a passion but since it was summer, I could not bring it home with me. Yet the seed was planted in my mind. I visited their website and printed several of their cake photos to take to local Pittsburgh bakeries to see if it would be possible to recreate one.

This was no small feat because, as someone who loves to imbibe spirits can tell you the name of all of the local watering holes, I can tell you all about the Pittsburgh baking establishments, their locations, and specialties. I was curious about a bakery across the river, which I had heard about, and decided to make a field trip.

Van Gogh’s sunflowers had been in my thoughts and, as his technique of using thick paint to illustrate his flowers coincided with mine regarding icing, that would be my inspiration for this birthday cake. Clutching my photo of a cake laden with sunflowers in my hand, I visited the Frenchman in Millvale. He initially scowled at the photo as he studied it and after several long moments of ponderous silence, he said he was up to the task. However, he warned me, his buttercream icing was so rich and heavy that he would have to modify the design so that none of the sunflowers would slide off the cake. He exuded confidence and — voila! — a cake was born! The finished product was everything I had hoped for and was a dessert lover’s dream. But having said that, he still could have gilded the lily (or should I say sunflower?) with a little more flowers or icing.

For my 55th birthday, which coincided with my retirement, a very special cake was required. I wanted to select a vegan cake and what better place to try than at the local natural foods grocer, Whole Foods? I scoured the internet and found a picture of a cake that appeared as if it had just stepped out of the garden. When I showed my picture to the young lady who was one of the cake decorators, she carefully studied the design and enthusiastically embraced my vision. The result was a six-inch, two-tiered vegan carrot cake studded with ample raisins and walnuts and topped with multi-colored roses and other assorted summer flowers, with a few edible bumblebees thrown in for good measure. It was a glorious cake that looked almost too good to eat (but I did not let that stop me).

Once again, with the inevitable passage of time, my birthday approached and I began the annual ritual of searching for the perfect celebratory cake. Always eager to try new places, I called a new chi-chi baking establishment in the East End to ask if they could help me obtain my heart’s desire. After describing my project to them, they told me their prices for what I had in mind would begin at $200, or I could simply order a “celebration cake” for a lesser price but that it would only have dots or swirls on it. Assuming my best imitation of Marge Simpson, I replied, “M-m-m-m-m. That’s not much of a celebration, is it?”

Of course, my quest for the perfect birthday cake did not end there; nor will it ever cease. Birthdays and their cakes are life-affirming. I find that selecting the perfect one is much like choosing the right dress for the right occasion. Just as there are possibly hundreds of dresses to try on before finding the perfect one, there are just as many birthday cakes to be designed and eaten before one encounters the ultimate.

In order to properly celebrate one’s birth, a cake is a definite necessity. But the cake itself is as personal as a fragrance and is a marvelous symbol of celebration that is uniquely linked to our hopes, dreams, and longings. A birthday cake can make you feel that all’s right with the world and, even during the depths of financial hardship, a birthday cake may provide a small sense of abundance and momentary indulgence. It should be a feast for the eyes, as well as the tongue. Since I am so fussy about my birthday cake, you may call me a birthday cake snob. But I’ll make things simple for you on my special day: No presents are needed. You bring the champagne and I’ll bring the cake!