So much cake! Just past was a week imbued with desserts. We
celebrated Marge’s birthday and Julia’s retirement. Julia baked and we noshed
for three days. Then we had dinner topped with a special-order limoncello cake.
You know, to tide us over for the few cakeless hours.
I once had a birth-week celebration that resulted in no
fewer than five cakes, my personal best. Each of the offices in which I worked
had a cake for me (and colleagues who also were born in late August). Then,
Julia and Cameron contrived to get me one for home, just in case the work ones
weren’t enough. No complaints. You can’t have too much cake, at least not until
you step on the scale at the beginning of the next week.
Where did the tradition of birthday cake start anyway? Why does
every party have to end in a sugar frenzy of sugar icing and sponge (and the
dreaded ice cream, which I have always hated in accompaniment)? How different would
the world have been if the tradition had been for a birthday fruit pie,
perhaps, or birthday cream puffs (which my Grandma Ann used to provide for
David when she’d visit us in June, just before bolting to Florida for three
months)? How about birthday muffins or sticky toffee puddings? Why sweet at
all? Why not birthday biscuits and gravy or birthday Yorkshire pudding?
It's all food for thought. Angel or devil’s food, no doubt.
