Birthday Cake

There I was, standing in my small kitchen, flour specks stained to my black shirt, yellow egg yolk stuck my hair, and melted butter dripping from the counter onto my left foot. The last time I had baked something from scratch was over a year ago, back for my granddaughter’s graduation. I normally get takeaway or storebought pastries to avoid the hassle of baking and cleaning for hours, especially when all the food I bake gets eaten in less than ten minutes.

However, today was different. Today was my birthday. And I decided to bake myself a cake. And this wasn’t any random cake. This was my cake. Made for me specifically.

When I was a child, my mother would bake a simple vanilla cake for my birthday. I must make it clear that my mother was not a lazy woman, nor did she lack creativity. Arguably, this cake was her most creative challenge, because I had decided as a child, that I would be the pickiest child in the world. Now, I wasn’t your run-of-the-mill ‘I-like-sweets-but-not-vegetables’ type of picky. I created a whole new category of picky.

For example, I liked bananas, but only on day 2 of ripeness. Any shade greener or yellow than day 2 ripeness and I would throw a fit. I would cry, kick, scream, and yell until my mother would run to the store and find the perfect shade of yellow-green that I could eat. I also liked toast, but it had to be the perfect crisp level, with the outside of the toast darkening just enough to show hints of black, and the centre slightly toasted, a nice hazelnut colour to ensure maximum fluffiness in the middle of the bread. Too crispy and I would scream. Too soft and I would cry. Oftentimes, a combination of both. Thankfully, I got out of this phase by 11 years old.

That’s why, for the first birthday I could remember, my mother had the wonderful idea of asking me what I wanted, rather than having to suffer through a painful trial and error of endless cake flavours and hours of baking. After debating over every flavour I could think of, I answered calmly:

“I would like a normal plain cake please.”

My mother stared at me.

“Plain?” She frowned, waiting for an elaboration.

I replied while rolling my eyes.

“Yes, plain. Chocolate is too rich, cookies and cream has too many chunks, lemon is too sour, and red velvet is too red.”

And from then on, for every birthday, I would simply have a plain cake, although my mother didn’t tell me there was vanilla in my cake until I was much older.

At my apartment kitchen counter, I was now trying to remember the recipe, which came with a bit of difficulty, although the recipe itself was very simple. My mum, to make sure it tasted just the right amount of ‘plain’ for me, made sure all the ingredients were of equal weight. Therefore, no flavour would overpower the others. If I were to argue it was ‘too buttery’, for example, my mum would counter:

“How could it be too ‘buttery’ if there is the same amount of flour? Wouldn’t it be too ‘floury’ then as well? Or too ‘eggy?’”

At 8 years old, my mum’s argument seemed logical and reasonable enough.

I decided to weigh everything at 250 grams. As long as they were all the same weight, nothing could go wrong. I placed my wet ingredients and dry ingredients in separate bowls. As I was sifting the flour through the sieve, watching the flour dance into the bowl like snow falling, I smiled softly to myself as I remembered my 11th birthday.

By that age, the vanilla cake was now the best part of my birthday. Every morning, on my birthday, I would wake up to the tempting smell of sweet vanilla softly filling my nose. The warm odour would seep into my chest, making its way down to my stomach, where my belly would answer with a rumble. As I would go downstairs and see the beautiful, one-layer circular cake, powdered lightly with sugar, my mum would gently smile and say:

“Not right now, wait for dinner.”

The waiting was the worst. The whole day, my mind would think about the wonderful smell and imagine the taste. My mouth would salivate, and no other food could fill the burning hole in my stomach, impatiently waiting for the first soft, spongey bite of my mother’s vanilla cake.

That year, my mum was also very heavily pregnant with my younger sister. She was very tired, especially after having baked all morning, and therefore let me, on that one occasion only, have the cake in the afternoon instead of the evening.

As I eagerly waited for my mum to bring the knife, I sat at the very end of the table, staring at the perfectly round, golden mix. We had already blown the candles and taken them out, when I then sucked the end of the candle that had been nudged into the cake, taking any opportunity I could to taste even a small crumb of my mother’s heavenly cake. As my mum cut the first line, she let out a soft gasp. She cut into the cake once more to form a slice, yet instead, a soft, gooey liquid trickled out of the cake, collapsing the whole pastry shell into a spongey liquid hybrid mess. My mum closed her eyes softly and whispered to herself:

“I forgot the flour…”

My family stared at my mother. Then their eyes shifted towards me. No one dared speak, until the picky princess spoke. I stared at the pile of the deconstructed cake, and I let out a small chuckle. The chuckle brewed in my hungry belly, then bellowed into a hysteric laugh. My family around me started chuckling, now with my mum joining in, until we all were crying with laughter.

I chuckled to myself as I reminisced, now adding the vanilla sugar into the mix. My mother always added a little bit of vanilla sugar into the cake, enough to enhance the cake’s ingredients without overbearing it vanilla flavour. It mostly created the most wonderful smell when baked. As I stared at the black specs of vanilla in my bowl, sitting softly on top of the cloud of flour, I was reminded of my daughter.

For my daughter’s 18th birthday, she had asked for the same vanilla cake I used to get on my birthdays. My mother had made it for me once with my daughter, and my daughter fell in love with it the same way I did. That year, we had decided to bake it together, since she was going off to university that fall, and we wouldn’t see each other for a while.

I thought she would have wanted a nice, fancy, bakery-made cake for her birthday, but she was adamant it be homemade. I obliged, however, I hadn’t planned to bake and therefore I wasn’t sure that I had all the ingredients, however simple the cake was. I had let my daughter rummage around the cupboard to find the dry ingredients, while I sifted through the fridge clutter to find butter, milk, and eggs. My daughter excitedly waved around a dusty old vanilla sugar packet with rips in it, while I reciprocated her excitement by showing her my hands full of the wet ingredients.

As we mixed all the wet ingredients in one bowl, while sifting the dry ingredients in the other, I let my daughter pour the vanilla sugar packet into the dry bowl. We mixed in the wet ingredients and proudly stared at our mixture. Our pride changed into confusion as we simultaneously brought our heads closer to the batter to inspect something that both caught our eye.

The vanilla beans were moving. As I stared at the cake, my daughter looked at the sugar packet she had just used. She looked in disgust before screaming:

“THESE ARE ANTS!!!!”

My daughter threw the sugar packet in the sink and drowned it with water. We both stared at the batter as the ants were now struggling to get out of the sugary quicksand trap.

“I mean… extra protein I guess?” I said, half-convinced.

Later that night, both my husband and my son ate 4 pieces each while my daughter barely touched her already thin piece. My son took it out of her plate and ate it in one gulp.

“Mum this is the best cake you’ve ever made! What did you put in it?” He said in between bites.

I looked at my daughter and smiled.

“Secret ingredient” I winked at her while she smiled.

The memory slowly faded from my mind as I became more focused on finishing my current cake. No ants this time. I thought to myself.

By now I was putting the batter into the cake tin, mesmerised by the folds of the batter falling on itself as I poured it slowly into the tin. I watched as the yellow batter filled the metal tin, until it barely passed the halfway line. I like to underfill my cake tins, as the cake always comes out nice and crispy on the sides.

I put the cake into the oven to bake as I cleaned the mess I had made. For a cake with so few ingredients, I was surprised at how much of a mess I was able to make. As I washed the final bowl in the sink, I smelled the heavenly scent of vanilla.

I knew at that point, it was time to take the cake out and let it sit. My mother always told me to let it rest, as it ‘marinated the flavours’. To this day, I still don’t know if that’s the truth or if she just wanted to make sure I didn’t eat it right away. Either way, I set the cake onto the table and let it sit until cooled. After an hour, I added the powdered sugar on top and a small striped candle. The smell was still strong and prominent, which brought back to another memory of my mother and I.

I remember walking to my mother’s care home, with a homemade vanilla cake slice wrapped neatly in some parchment paper. I walked into the building, greeted the receptionist, and went into my mother’s room.

“Mrs. Smith, you’ve got a guest here to see you today.” The nurse smiled as she motioned to me. I waved awkwardly to my mother, placing the cake in-between my arm and my ribs

“I wasn’t expecting anyone.” My mother replied, staring at me in confusion.

I smiled sheepishly and looked at the nurse. She motioned me to sit down, before whispering in my ear: “It hasn’t been too good of a day today.”

I looked at my mother, who seemed so frail and distant.

I took a deep breath before speaking.

“So, Mrs. Smith, I heard it’s your birthday today?”

“Is it?” My mother replied absentmindedly, still focusing on my face.

“Yes” I continued. “And I thought I could give you some cake for your special day.”

I handed her the parchment paper wrapped cake. She tenderly opened the parchment paper until the whole cake was visible. The smashed up cake didn’t resemble much of a cake anymore, but the sweet vanilla smell was still prominent.

I noticed I had forgotten to get some cutlery, especially since the cake resembled more like crumbs than cake at that point. I stood up.

“Mrs. Smith, let me get you a fork or a spoon or something, I don’t want you to make a mess.”

I quickly ran out of the room before she could reply and went into the kitchen. As I came back into the room with a plastic spoon in one hand, I noticed my mother had already eaten part of the cake.

She was looking at the cake. As she chewed slowly, she looked up from the cake and looked at me. She had tears streaming down her face.

She placed the cake to the side and stood up, placing her hands on her mouth.

“Oh my beautiful daughter…” She sobbed. “How could I forget you?” She made her way towards me.

I gently went towards her and gave her a hug, now crying as well.

“Oh mum… Happy birthday.”

I opened my eyes, now back in my little apartment, sat at the dining table, with my cake in front of me. Some tears had dropped onto the cake, leaving it’s mark etched on the icing sugar on top, which had blended with my tears. I lit the candle and closed my eyes. Happy Birthday. I whispered to myself.