The Italian Birthday Cake. I'm 42!
This has been my birthday cake for decades, and probably also a fixture of birthday parties for all the Italian kids my age.
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The morning of my birthday, I woke up earlier than usual. I like to lay there, on my bed, quiet, with closed eyes. It’s the anticipation of the day that thrills me, now that I am 42 years old just like when I was a child.
This year, for the first time, Livia climbed the stairs to our bedroom, jumped on the bed and, after a hint from Tommaso, she hugged me and said, Happy birthday Mum. Oggi è la tua festa, today is your birthday. Can I have a slice of your carrot cake?
I like to bake my own birthday cake. As every year in the last 5 years, it’s a complete failure.
It’s my fault, I know. I shouldn’t attempt a new recipe the day before my birthday, investing all my time and ingredients in a wild experiment, when all you need is just a reliable birthday cake. I had also planned to share that carrot cake here today, but that will be for another time, as that cake definitely needs more testing.
Luckily, I went for breakfast at my favourite bakery, Forno Pellegrino (included in our foodie guide to Colle Val d’Elsa), and they had a surprise for me: a perfect cannolo and torta caprese with raspberries.
Tonight we will eat that carrot cake that needs to be perfected (a dusting of icing sugar would do), but if I close my eyes and think about a birthday cake, what comes to my mind is a sponge cake sandwiched with pastry cream and chocolate pastry cream.
For a lifetime, this has been my birthday cake, first baked by my grandma and decorated for me by my dad, then my solo project since I was a teenager, and I was attempting my first steps as a home baker.
As I was missing a cake, today I repurposed the recipe I shared on the blog for Livia’s first birthday here in the newsletter, as a memento for next year: bake what you already know and ditch all the experiments, at least for your birthday.
Would you share with me your favourite birthday cake? The one you’ve been baking for decades, or the one you always buy or request when you want to celebrate?
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RECIPE - The Italian Birthday Cake
This has been my birthday cake for decades, and probably also a fixture of birthday parties for all the Italian kids my age.
It is a classic sponge cake, sliced into three layers, soaked in alchermes, and filled with vanilla pastry cream and chocolate pastry cream. My nonna would frost it with traditional icing, often in a shade of pale pink given by a few drops of alchermes. My dad, not a pastry chef but the most resourceful man I know, would pipe chocolate from a pastry bag to decorate the cake, writing my name, my age, and adding a few doodles, all for the final photo that would be printed and attached into the family album.