Birthday Cakes of Yore

Good Morning -

Did you ever have one of those cakes at a family gathering frosted with cool whip and layered with pudding and fruit? That's what rests behind our Virgen - a quite fancy cake with cut strawberries, blackberries and, according to the recipe, both banana and vanilla pudding layers inside.

This type of cake was a staple for my family's summer birthdays for a good few years. My guess is that Good Housekeeping or Betty made them popular, but I don't know that for sure. Probably my Mom saw it on the cover of something in the check-out aisle and decided it would be nice.

Starting in April, and then skipping May (except for Mother's day), my family has one birthday in June (plus Father's day), two in July, one in August, one in September, and one in October. That's a long stretch of birthdays, so having a cake staple was always a good idea.

For whatever reason, my mom, who is a great cook and very creative in the kitchen, didn't gourmet-up or alter the recipe for these cakes in any way. She didn't substitute some fancy custard for the box pudding, or change the frosting from cool whip to something homemade. She didn't make intricate checkerboard designs with the cake layers, or create elaborate geometric decorations with the berry slices. She just stuck to the recipe and we all loved it.

A few weeks ago, when we were down on in Long Beach Island New Jersey visiting my partner's friend, we somehow got on the topic of this style of dessert. My partner's friend remembered her mom making similar cakes for a stretch that involved poking holes into the cake and pouring in different colored jell-o. There was something so homemade about these cakes that had us smiling.

But why now? Why this cake now? While it's not my birthday yet, today is the staff birthday gathering for August birthdays, so I needed something to bring to share. Originally, I was going to make a coffee and a peach granita (one of each, not both together - Lord, my brain is clumsy this morning...), but our freezer doesn't currently have the space needed to slowly set up these delicious summer treats.

In trying to come up with an alternative, I remember the conversation about those Good Housekeeping-style cakes and decided to make one. I knew it was going to be rough to have the oven on, but it would just be for 40 minutes max and I could just crank the window units while it was baking.

I bought the ingredients the other night (see previous posting about child abuse in the store), so last night just had to come home and bake. One of the women I work with needs gluten-free, and I've been curious about how baking works without wheat flour, so I bought a gluten-free cake mix and it turned out great. Some of the other recipes I've found for gf involved specific combinations of particular, non-wheat flours, but this was a simple 3 eggs, quarter cup of oil, and a half cup of water added to the mix.

The cake baked perfectly and I sliced it into three layers when it was cooled - the dome layer, and then two layers out of the body of the cake. Each layer then got vanilla pudding, blueberries, and a little more pudding (kind of like mortar). Once assembled, I smeared the whole thing with freshly whipped cream (I couldn't bring myself to do cool-whip) - the whole time trying to channel my sister who is a whiz at cake decorating (so much so that she's made wedding cakes for strangers before). Some blueberries as a decorative ring, and I was done.

It was one of the best nights I've had in a while. It felt so good to have a goal, put work towards that goal, and see a finished product. None of the changes my partner and I are working on right now are that tangible or immediate, so making this cake was just what I needed.

Here's to that. Here's to tangible rewards in the midst of intangible progress.

Here's a picture of my cake. I'd slice it to show the pretty pudding/berry layers, but that might lead us down a dangerous road of sampling before it's time.