Birthday Cake

Graham’s grandfather turns 90 this weekend and the whole family is gathering to celebrate. Grandkids are flying into town with their boyfriends and girlfriends in tow (and multiple covid-tests scheduled). A certain great-grandbaby has been practicing new skills to show off like crawling and babbling.

I’ve been thinking about birthday cake. I loved Dorie Greenspan’s recent NY Times article and recipe for the strawberry baby cakes she’s making to mark the occasion of her granddaughter’s first birthday. Ten years ago, when Graham’s grandfather, who he calls Jido, turned 80, I baked a towering cake for the party. It was a honey cake, frosted with rose water buttercream and garnished with pistachios and candied rose petals. I remember that Graham’s mom and I picked those roses in the middle of the night from her neighbors’ yards in Bungalow Heaven, Pasadena. We were laughing so hard that I worried we’d wake up the whole neighborhood.

And I remember when I was in college and had recently started dating Graham, he went home to LA one weekend for his mom’s birthday. I knew she loved miniature things, so I baked her a small cake—just six inches across, all for her—and I carefully packed it up in a plastic cake carrier and toted it with me on a Southwest flight to Burbank airport. She couldn’t believe it.