Birthday Cake

White Cake with Whipped Cream and Raspberry Gelee

I can't possibly be the only one who bakes their own birthday cake, and yet, when I tell people, they act surprised. How about you? Do you bake your own birthday cake? If you visit my blog (often), you are probably a (home) baker. And you probably don't enjoy store bought cakes that much. Partially hydrogenated frosting anyone? Okay, okay, I can be a bit of a cake snob :o)

While browsing Sandie's blog, Crumbs of Love, I was very impressed with the white cake she made for her daughter's birthday. What I liked the most was the wonderful crumb of the cake and the fact that it had sour cream in it. When my birthday came around, I had the perfect excuse to try out this recipe! One could argue that a birthday is not a time to experiment with new recipes but I had a good feeling about the recipe :o)

A slice of birthday cake heaven :o)

Brownie Latte Cheesecake

Let's say, you need to make a birthday cake for someone very special. What do you do? I'd really like to know. Please feel free to leave a comment, telling me about your approach.

Here's what I did for my husband's birthday cake. I stared at all my cookbooks in the bookshelf for a long time, and then grabbed a couple of them and browsed through them, hoping "the" recipe would just jump at me. Pretty scientific, huh? :o). Well, it sure did! I was sold as soon as I saw this beautiful picture of a slice of this rich and decadent Brownie Latte Cheesecake from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle. This would be the first time I had made a cheesecake for any birthday. One could argue it's not traditional. My argument: you're getting two desserts for the price of one, so who cares! :o) The fact that Tish gave it two thumbs up certainly helped a lot too!

Happy birthday, sweetie!

A slice of heavenly Brownie Latte Cheesecake

Hubby's birthday cake

Never before did it take me this long to decide what kind of cake to bake for my husband's birthday. Do I go with a recipe that I've made before or do I take this opportunity to try something completely new but risk total failure and end up having to run to the store to "buy" a cake. I'm sure you've been there :o) I decided to throw all caution to the wind and go with something completely new. I narrowed down my choices to: Dobos Torte or a Chiffon Layer Cake. I figured that either option would be a challenge; the Dobos Torte for its numerous thin layers and finicky buttercream, and the Chiffon Cake because it seems almost impossible to bake one without a tube pan. The Dobos Torte lost :o)

Here's a sneak preview of the birthday cake :o)

Birthday cake

I usually bake my own birthday cake. Although I skipped this “tradition” last year, I thought I’d make up for it by making this year’s cake extra special. With so many different cakes, fillings, and frostings to choose from, where do you start? I had just borrowed Flo Braker’s “Baking for All Occasions” from the library and wanted to bake from it. The idea of a deconstructed Black Forest Cake or Schwarzwalder Kirsch Torte came to me. Now I had everything I needed to start baking.



Instead of the usual sponge cake, I thought the cake would taste good with a vanilla bean-infused white cake. I used Flo Braker’s recipe for Silver Cake with Poppy Seeds and just omitted the poppy seeds as she recommended for a classic white cake.

I love fruit-based mousses and have made them multiple times for cake fillings. In this case, in order to stay in the Black Forest Cake spirit, I thought I’d make a cherry mousse. If you haven’t had a chance to browse through Rick Rodgers’ “Kaffeehaus”, you’re missing out on tons of delectable recipes for European-style baked goods. For my birthday cake, I adapted his recipe for Strawberry Cream Filling. For that extra cherry flavor, I arranged halved cherries on top of the mousse filling.

Now for the icing on the cake (literally), I decided to use white chocolate instead of dark chocolate, so I chose Flo Braker’s recipe White Chocolate/Cream Cheese Buttercream frosting. I highly recommend using good-quality white chocolate for this otherwise it will taste like wax. This frosting was very creamy with a great melt-in-your-mouth feel to it. The vanilla flavor in the white chocolate paired beautifully with the vanilla bean aroma in the white cake. The almond flavor added to the the frosting complimented the cherries very well, in my opinion. On top of the cake, I spread some cherry preserves for that nice dark red color contrast against the ivory-white frosting.