Birthday Cake

My grandfather was a professional baker, and owned his own bakery in the small Nebraska town in which I grew up. My father, following in his own father’s footsteps, was also a professional baker, and ultimately took over my grandfather’s bakery. That bakery bore our family’s name for nearly 50 years.

When people learn about my family’s culinary background, they often say, “You must have grown up with lots of sweets in your house. Did your father do a lot of baking at home?”

My father did exactly zero baking at home. It would have been extraordinarily difficult for him to translate a recipe from 200 loaves of bread to one. And, since donuts and cookies and pastries and fresh bread were always available to us (our entire family worked in some capacity for my father at some point in our lives), we rarely brought anything home. Except for bread. My father made the most delicious white bread you could ever imagine. Some day I’m going to make a loaf of white bread that rivals his….. But, I digress.

I started thinking about this today as I baked a birthday cake for my son, who will turn 30 on Sunday. A banana cake with chocolate icing. It’s what he always requests. (I love baking cakes, but still, after all these years, I struggle to get the perfect cake in this high altitude.) Anyway, I began thinking about how I am pretty sure I never had a homemade birthday cake (meaning a cake prepared in a home kitchen) until I was an adult. An OLD adult, as a matter of fact.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I always had a birthday cake. But it was always a cake prepared in the bakery. And very often, it was a cake that someone else had ordered and neglected to pick up. In fact, we have a story we tell every year on my brother’s birthday, and the story is absolutely true. His birthday falls right after Christmas, and my mother had forgotten to prepare him a birthday cake. But, luckily enough, one of their customers hadn’t picked up the cake they had ordered that day. That year, my brother Dave’s birthday cake said Happy birthday Frank from Friends.

I found a recipe for a delicious banana cake with rich chocolate frosting. I’m going to pair it with homemade frozen vanilla custard, and it will knock my son’s socks off!

I wonder if Frank was mad at his friends for not getting him a birthday cake?