MisCAKEn Identity
When is a birthday cake not a birthday cake?
Hello friends,
To state the obvious, Christmas is coming up soon! Today, as per usual, our family pre-cooked the turkey so we can freeze it until Christmas Eve, and then reheat it, once it’s defrosted, on Christmas Day. As we were discussing how best to cook the turkey this year, I couldn’t help reminding my mum of a… mistake… that occurred a few years ago on my birthday. It was a mistake so wonderful, I thought it worth recording for prosperity at the time, and it’s one of my favourite stories to tell, so I thought I’d share it here.
I hope you enjoy this little tale of ‘mistaken identity’ whilst you wait patiently for me to write the next newsletter.
I might not make it back to your inbox before the 25th December, so I’ll take the opportunity now to wish you a very happy Christmas, however you celebrate the holiday. May your days be merry, your dinners delicious and your puddings always sweet.
PJ
MisCAKEn Identity
I like birthdays. I like to not make a big deal out of them. I like to not remind people, not ask for presents, and not make plans. This is actually quite difficult to achieve when you have a thoughtful and loving family, who always accurately remember the date of your birth, acquire (somehow) a present list in advance, and make a collective effort to mark the occasion with cards, a pleasant activity, and cake.
Especially cake. A cake with colourful lighted candles on it.
Some greatly misinformed adults think they’ve outgrown candles and willingly accept a candle-less cake on their birthday as if that still makes the offered baked confectionary a birthday cake.
It does not. That’s just afternoon tea.
And if you’re presented with a candle-less cake on the annual remembrance of the day you were born into this world, you surely have to ask yourself: is it even really my birthday? In fact, I’d argue the cake is of secondary importance to the candles. If candles are burning on top of an old hat, and people sing Happy Birthday, surely that counts? Surely, a birthday is only truly marked as a natal celebration by a cake (probably not a hat) crowned with candles?
I need this to be true for reasons that will soon become apparent, because, this year, I had a birthday cake to remember.
I’ve had pretty memorable cakes in the past. I was lucky enough to be born to the Queen of Birthday Cakes. The family photo albums are full of mouth-gaping, sugar-soaked, icing-laden creations: Frog Fishing on a Log, Teddy Bears’ Picnic, Day at the Beach, Ankylosaurus; and Number-Shaped Cakes, with lace, silver baubles, and sugar mice draped over them.
One year, my sister, LJ, even had a local bakery make me a WiggleWaggle cake (the WiggleWaggle is a three-headed creature I invented when I was nine-years-old, and the subject of the first book I ever wrote).
But this year’s cake…
This was a cake that has never, nor will ever be eaten again in the history of Birthday Confectionary.
We decided that I should be ‘too mature’ now for an Avengers/Star Wars/Lord of the Rings/Nerd cake, and that since I’d already had a homemade cake from my friends, a shop-bought one would do for after the Family Birthday Dinner. My mum was pretty excited about the cake she’d found in the frozen pudding section of the supermarket. It was the last one left and very exotic, she said.
We had dinner, the plates were cleared, and I was left sitting at the table whilst secretive sounds wafted from the kitchen. It’s a tradition, in my family, to pretend that the Birthday Cake is a completely unexpected follow-up to the Birthday Meal. Every birthday, the celebrant pretends that they don’t know why everyone has suddenly left the room and decamped to the kitchen. And then, when the lights go out and everyone reappears, they act surprised at the presence of an iced sponge on a pretty plate, shimmering with candlelight. ‘Oh! A cake! With candles? For me?’
Usually, there’s lots of complimenting the cake too as it’s sliced up for consumption. ‘Ooh! This looks delicious! How big a piece do you want? I think I’m going to want seconds!’
This year, as I sat in front of my birthday cake, with the ghosts of extinguished flames still hovering in the air, I couldn’t quite keep the hesitation from my voice.
“Erm… this looks different. Very… exotic?”
“There’s a hole in it,” Dad said.
“It’s called a Pumpkin and Festive Fruits Wreath,” Mum reassured us. “I think it’s probably more of a Christmas pudding. I’ve heated it up. It’s got dates and a bit of brandy in it.”
“What’s that on the top? Icing sugar?” Dad asked.
I shrugged dubiously, but cut up the… err, wreath… and dished it out to the family members around the table. It—the cake—had an interesting texture: quite stodgy and certainly not your traditional buttery, fluffy sponge. Everyone looked a little uncertain as they picked up their spoons.
I tried a mouthful. It was a little rough on the tongue and reminded me of something I’d eaten before. Not cake, but something else. It wasn’t particularly sweet either.
“Is it like a savoury cake?” I asked.
“It’s weird,” LJ said.
“It’s just different,” Mum protested. “It’s not supposed to be like your usual sponge cake. It’s got pumpkin in it.”
“Mine’s not got the white stuff on it,” Dad said.
“Icing sugar.”
“I don’t think it’s icing sugar.”
I chewed a few more mouthfuls. I was finding it hard to pin-point a satisfactory comparison. Eating it felt like an acute case of déjà vu. The combination of ingredients clearly worked together—just not in this context. There were bits stuck in my teeth and to the roof of my mouth, and I was finding it a hard to swallow each spoonful. It wasn’t that the taste was unpleasant, just not cake-like.
“I’m not sure I can eat this,” LJ said eventually, getting up from the table and heading to the kitchen. “What did it say on the packet?”
“It’s a Festive Wreath!” Mum called after her.
I was half-way through mine by now and wondering if it was the sort of cake that would be better with cream, or custard.
“It’s quite… dense,” I said. “Might be nicer with cream—just to sweeten it up a bit?”
LJ came back from the kitchen with the packet in one hand. She gave me a look. It was a look that a friend might give you if they were deciding whether or not they should tell you that your partner’s cheating on you with your cousin; or that the company you just invested in has gone bankrupt; or that you were actually found as a baby in a crashed Martian spaceship. It was the sort of look that makes you feel that maybe you’d be better off not asking ‘What’s wrong?’; a maybe-ignorance-is-bliss look. It was definitely an ‘it’s your birthday, so maybe this can wait ‘til tomorrow’ look.
“Umm,” LJ said.
I held out my hand for the packet and read the front of it: Pumpkin & Festive Fruit Wreath. Then I flipped it over and read the back. I put down my spoon, looked up at LJ and tried not to choke as I read out the description.
“Breadcrumb stuffing with pumpkin, brandy, raisins, dates and goat’s cheese.”
“No!” Mum exclaimed.
“It’s stuffing,” I confirmed. I showed her the packet.
“So the white stuff’s not icing sugar?” Dad asked.
“It’s goat’s cheese.”
“I didn’t have any on mine.” He looked at his empty bowl and then at my half-eaten pudding. “Are you going to finish that?”
“It’s not cake! It’s supposed to be eaten with roast turkey and gravy!”
“I’ll just finish it off then…”
Which he did. In fact, my father finished off everyone’s not-actually-cake dessert. That’s a post-war, boarding-school upbringing for you.
“I thought it was a pudding!” Mum apologised unhappily. “It says Festive Fruit Wreath on the front… It was in the frozen puddings section!”
Fortunately, she had another pudding ready—a real one this time: a cherry and amaretto semi-freddo.
As Mum bought it out on a plate (without candles) I gave her a doubtful look.
“Pudding take-two!” she smiled.
“I dunno, Mum,” I said gravely, “I’m not sure I can eat this—I’m pretty stuffed…”
I’d love to hear:
When is a birthday cake not a birthday cake?
If you’ve got a birthday or cake-related mishap of your own to share? My mum, in particular, would also like hear these so she can be reassured she’s not alone in making this kind of mistake.
The best/worst/weirdest cake you’ve ever eaten or made?
Your thoughts on a goat’s cheese based icing?