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What Was Your Childhood Birthday Cake?

gulfporter

By gulfporter
in Food Traditions & Culture

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gulfporter

gulfporter

Posted
Posted

I think in most families, each child has their favorite birthday cake flavor.  

 

Mine was a Duncan Hines White Cake mix with homemade peanut butter frosting.  

 

My DH's was German Chocolate Cake.  

 

What was yours, growing up?

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Darienne

Darienne

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Posted

At the risk of sounding pathetic, I have to say that I never had a cake nor a party.  My adult favorite is a Double Chocolate Mousse Bomb found in One Cake, One Hundred Desserts several years ago and I made it for a party which was thrown for me by some women friends and then ever since on my own account. 

 

My own kids loved a cake made from chocolate wafer biscuits put together with whipping cream and then cut on the diagonal.  So easy to make. 

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Darienne

 

learn, learn, learn...

 

We live in hope. 

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Deryn

Deryn

Posted
Posted

My mother's homemade angel food cake with 7-minute icing for me.

 

My kids always seemed to like chocolate the best. I went to great trouble every year to give them elaborate decoration and/or shapes depending on their current interests or party theme. Doubt they cared much about that, but, I had fun.

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Smithy

Smithy

Posted
Posted

Devil's Food cake, with chocolate frosting.  Decorations were cool, but I was after the flavor. The frosting Mom made from scratch, but the cake mix always came from Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker.

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Nancy Smith, aka "Smithy"
Host, eG Forums - nsmith@egstaff.org

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"Every day should be filled with something delicious, because life is too short not to spoil yourself. " -- Ling (with permission)
"There comes a time in every project when you have to shoot the engineer and start production." -- author unknown

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patti_h

patti_h

Posted
Posted

I don't really remember what we had when we were young, but once we were in high school, our birthday cake was Cassata Cake that we drove to the West side in Buffalo to buy it at an old Italian Bakery. Man was that an awesome cake!

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CatPoet

CatPoet

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Posted

I am born in  late May, that is the end of the jam jars in our house and my dear mother used to refuse to buy jam, so most often my cake was apple sauce, vanilla cream ( horrible stuff), whipped cream and sprinkles  or my name, some times I would get a store bought cake and then I would ask for  Russian banana  or  Black currant or  Budapest, but these where are treats . 

 My sisters would  get  strawberry, cloudberry or raspberry on their cakes and chocolate since they are  born close to  major holidays in Sweden but when my came around  that jam was gone, so one year I hid a  jar of strawberry jam for my cake ,  I guarded it like made and when I knew mum was making the cake I sneaked in with the jar, otherwise my middle sister would eat it. YES, if there was a  berry jam jar left before my birthday, she would eat it to spite me.

Cheese is you friend, Cheese will take care of you, Cheese will never betray you, But blue mold will kill me.

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suzilightning

suzilightning

Posted
Posted (edited)

I never really wanted cake...not a big fan.  I was more interested in what I got to choose for dinner!!

My mom was born in June and she always had strawberry shortcakes made with biscuits NOT sweet sponge shells.

My grandfather always had a yellow cake with black walnut frosting and my sister, whose birthday was the day before his, didn't care what kind of cake it was but it HAD to be iced in purple.

 

I make a Black Forest Mousse pie for my husband every year for his celebration.

Edited by suzilightning (log)
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Nothing is better than frying in lard.

Nothing.  Do not quote me on this.

 

Linda Ellerbee

Take Big Bites

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teagal

teagal

Posted
Posted

Duncan Hines white cake mix, filled and frosted with haupia, basically a coconut pudding, and lots of shredded coconut sprinkled over that. My Aunt made it for me every year. Once I moved to Missouri anytime I've made it people swoon.

Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality. Clifton Fadiman

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Lisa Shock

Lisa Shock

Posted
Posted

I liked to try different things, and our cakes were always from a bakery. I can remember getting marble cake one year, spice cake another year, and orange cake with fudge icing once. We moved a lot, and some places had far better bakeries than others.

Have you read eGullet's Kitchen Scale manifesto?

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Ashen

Ashen

Posted
Posted

mocha cake with a  mocha buttercream and the edge covered in sliced toasted almonds.   It was from a   bakery that  is still around but the cake is a shadow of what it used to be. 

"Why is the rum always gone?"

Captain Jack Sparrow

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Martin Fisher

Martin Fisher

Posted
Posted

Pretty simple...usually Screwball cake with either vanilla or peanut butter frosting.

~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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Martin Fisher

Martin Fisher

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......strawberry shortcakes made with biscuits NOT sweet sponge shells.

 

I wholeheartedly agree.

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~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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CatPoet

CatPoet

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Suz: we got to choose dinner at our name day, not birthday  and since mine was squeezed between Christmas and  my sister birthday,  I  would wish for  kebab, pizza, cheese plate or  elk ( alces alces) stew, what I got was whole different story sometimes.

Cheese is you friend, Cheese will take care of you, Cheese will never betray you, But blue mold will kill me.

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demiglace

demiglace

Posted
Posted

I would have my nose pressed to the Woolworth's window months in advance to my birthday. Would I want a yellow or choc. cake..what colour icing, what colour roses..it was a big deal for me. The cake was pretty good too. :smile:

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JeanneCake

JeanneCake

Posted
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Growing up, we had the whipped cream cakes from the local Italian bakery down the street; when we moved to the suburbs, we'd make our own.  My little sister got very elaborately decorated cakes that I would make for her (the most memorable one was Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall), when the only thing you could get was Wilton stuff for decorating supplies.

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SylviaLovegren

SylviaLovegren

Posted
Posted (edited)

Once my mom made angel food cake with pink 7-minute frosting in swirls and my Barbie doll was stuck in the middle, so she looked like she had a fantastic pink skirt.   Otherwise it was white butter cake, from scratch, with buttercream frosting, or angel food from a mix with  a powdered sugar glaze in pink.

 

ETA:  My dad would always complain if the angel food wasn't home made because he didn't like the taste of the aluminum-based leavening agent used in commercial cakes.

Edited by SylviaLovegren (log)
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ChocoMom

ChocoMom

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Posted

This is going to sound awful, in comparison to all the wonderful decadent cakes you all listed.....but, in Michigan, we used to have Bill Knapp's restaurants all over. If you went on your birthday, you'd get a little 6" chocolate cake with THICK chocolate fudge frosting.  OMGOSH... I could've eaten that for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

 

I don't know what the secret was to that moist, rich chocolately lovliness--or that super thick fudgey naughtiness....but dang! That is the stuff that childhood memories (and a big butt)  are made of. :raz:   

 

And, another great example of "opposites attract":  Hubby's favorite-  was Angel Food cake; iced with simple icing, then topped with fresh strawberries and sugar.

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-Andrea

 

A 'balanced diet' means chocolate in BOTH hands. :biggrin:

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Lindacakes

Lindacakes

Posted
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In the Cleveland area, it was Hough's Bakery.  There are Web sites that have recipes that reportedly came from Hough's, which no longer exists.

 

Always white cake with white icing.  The standard came with beautiful icing flowers which could be customized (I want sweet peas . . . ).  Then there were birthday theme cakes.  One year I had Raggedy Ann and I was in heaven.  My family still thinks of this as special-occasion cake (white with white icing and icing flowers) and it comes from a local bakery.

 

It still sticks because my adult favorite is angel food made from scratch or anything egg white heavy, like a Pavlova.

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I like to bake nice things. And then I eat them. Then I can bake some more.

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Toliver

Toliver

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I remember for my 8th birthday my mom made me an angel food cake from scratch. I took a bite and thought it tasted just like the smell of turpentine. I refused to eat anymore of it. My mom doesn't remember the incident but I am adamant that it happened, especially because it was my birthday cake.

There's a local bakery that makes a devil's food chocolate cake with a whipped cream frosting that tastes like a Hostess Suzi-Q...only better. If only we'd had that cake when I was a kid! :laugh:

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“Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits. It says, 'Oooooo.'

Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios.”

– From Fox TV’s “Family Guy”

 

Tim Oliver

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rajoress

rajoress

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Posted

My birthday is in February so for some reason, my mother used to make me what she called Marta Washington cake. It was yellow cake layers filled with jam then sprinkled with powdered sugar. I look back now and can't believe I didn't have frosting! When I got older I made my own black forest cake. But my birthday is on valentine's day so for the past half century I've had a heart-shaped cake (same pans)!

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Smithy

Smithy

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Once my mom made angel food cake with pink 7-minute frosting in swirls and my Barbie doll was stuck in the middle, so she looked like she had a fantastic pink skirt.   Otherwise it was white butter cake, from scratch, with buttercream frosting, or angel food from a mix with  a powdered sugar glaze in pink.

 

ETA:  My dad would always complain if the angel food wasn't home made because he didn't like the taste of the aluminum-based leavening agent used in commercial cakes.

 

I'd forgotten all about those doll cakes.  One of my second cousins was a skilled cake baker and decorator. (If the term 'home caterer' had been invented back then, it would have applied.)  She never made those cakes for my birthday but she did for others' birthdays and kept a stock of dolls for the occasion.  Thanks for that memory.

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Nancy Smith, aka "Smithy"
Host, eG Forums - nsmith@egstaff.org

Follow us on social media! Facebook; instagram.com/egulletx; twitter.com/egullet

"Every day should be filled with something delicious, because life is too short not to spoil yourself. " -- Ling (with permission)
"There comes a time in every project when you have to shoot the engineer and start production." -- author unknown

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cyalexa

cyalexa

Posted
Posted

This is going to sound awful, in comparison to all the wonderful decadent cakes you all listed.....but, in Michigan, we used to have Bill Knapp's restaurants all over. If you went on your birthday, you'd get a little 6" chocolate cake with THICK chocolate fudge frosting.  OMGOSH... I could've eaten that for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

 

 

I remember Bill Knapps! My mother loved their potatoes au gratin.

 

My grandmother used to bake dimes in to our birthday cakes, one for each year. Seems crazy now but we loved it then.

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