Friday Food Finds
19: Special Occasion Cakes
It’s cake week, friends (she said, pretending like life is just one giant episode of The Great British Bake Off). I’m sharing some recipes today that’ll make those summertime special occasions extra memorable.
My daughter’s birthday is next week, and since we’ll be spending it with family then, we hosted a birthday party with friends last weekend. For this celebration, as I have every year for the past 4 years, I made King Arthur’s 2019 Recipe of the Year, Classic Birthday Cake. It’s a recipe I had a hand in developing — I ate more birthday cake in 2018 than I think I had throughout my 34 years of life at that point — and to date it’s my absolute favorite yellow/vanilla cake recipe.
Based on the old-fashioned hot milk cake made with — you guessed it — scalded hot milk, this cake is so soft, moist, and spongy it rivals the best boxed cake mixes out there (a feat that’s surprisingly hard to achieve with scratch recipes). Along with the chocolate frosting included in the recipe, it really just exemplifies a quintessential American birthday cake.
It’s also an easily adaptable cake if you’re into that, and I tend to riff on it in some way every year. In 2020, it was a vanilla cake with blueberry infused frosting. In 2021 I made a 9” x 13” sheet cake with vanilla frosting and devoted my time to the unicorn decoration (I’m not an artist) on top.
This year, I became a little consumed with the idea of using flavored milk to make the cake. I wondered how a hot strawberry milk cake and hot chocolate milk cake would turn out. So rather than experiment in my own time, I used my daughter’s birthday as an excuse to play around with creating a Neapolitan cake (that’s okay to do, right?).
In the end, the cake was mostly a success. Although the Neapolitan flavors were not that obvious, if you really focused on them, the fruity strawberry and dark chocolate notes were certainly present. At the least they worked to contrast the vanilla, which showed beautifully, as it always does.
I’m happy to get into the details of how I adapted the cakes to use flavored milks, but I also don’t want to go on endlessly in this newsletter. If there are some of you out there interested in these adaptations, let me know, and perhaps I’ll even explore the concept further and create some new recipes. I will only add here that there was food coloring involved in the strawberry cake and cocoa powder in the chocolate cake. Otherwise, I just tweaked some of the other ingredients a little bit.
If you’re more of a flavor purist when it comes to cake, this Best Ever Chocolate Zucchini Cake from Zoë François’ recent book Zoë Bakes Cakes might be more your style. It is supremely chocolate-y, and the only reason you might suspect it has zucchini in it is because it is so dang moist and rich. I rarely come across a bundt cake that doesn’t have an undesirably dry exterior. This is one of them. It doesn’t even need any icing to elevate it. Yes, it’s that good just on its own. So if you’re looking for something to bake with the bounty of zucchini that may or may not be taking up residence in your home, I highly recommend this recipe. You may never need another special occasion (or everyday) chocolate cake recipe again.
For some of you, cheesecake might be your special occasion cake of choice. If that’s the case, I’d encourage you to venture away from the ever-popular New York-style cheesecake and try your hand at either this Soufflé Cheesecake - スフレチーズケーキ1 from Namiko Hirasawa Chen (Nami) at Just One Cookbook or this Basque-Style Cheesecake - Tarta de Queso2 that I developed for King Arthur.
The Soufflé Cheesecake is pretty much exactly what it sounds like texture-wise: a cross between American cheesecake and chiffon cake. In flavor the cake differs from American cheesecake in two distinct ways: it’s not as sweet and it has less robust cream cheese flavor. Though that certainly means nothing once you know what to expect. This cheesecake is incredibly light and fluffy and its deliciousness is in its simplicity. The quiet notes of cream cheese and lemon are not overcome by sugar or other competing flavors, and the unique mouthfeel is definitely one I suggest you experience for yourself.
The Basque-Style Cheesecake, in comparison, is as much the polar opposite of the soufflé cheesecake as possible. Meltingly smooth and ultra creamy, it’s probably more familiar to any New York cheesecake fan, but its darker, sometimes blistered surface and method of preparation are entirely distinctive. As someone who doesn’t particularly appreciate the cheesecake-making process or even the end result all that much, I fell in love with this variation pretty quickly. The hardest part of the recipe is waiting until the cheesecake is cool enough to enjoy.
And that’s it for celebratory cakes today. I’ll just end by clarifying that truly any occasion can qualify as special or a celebration when it comes to cake — birthday not required. A Friday evening spent at home, for example, is a good excuse to bake a cake for yourself and anyone else around you. Don’t you think?
Best,
Charlotte
P.S. I’m going to try my best to get at least one newsletter out to you next week. We’ll be spending our family time by a lake though, which may not be as conducive to quiet writing time (as much as I’d like to believe it would be!). If not next week, it’ll be the following one.
Like many baked goods, the origins of Japanese cheesecake are somewhat disputed. Cream cheese, in addition to other dairy products, was not widely available or enjoyed in Japan until after World War II, so it’s at least been established as a relatively modern invention. The most accepted history links the cheesecake to Japanese chef Tomotaro Kuzuno after he discovered the käsekuchen (a German version of cheesecake) on a trip to Berlin in 1969. He enjoyed the cake so much that when he got home, he set out to create his own version: Japanese cheesecake.
Tarta de queso is Spanish for cheesecake, which is not a particular specialty of Spain. However, Basque cheesecake got its name because of one chef, Santiago Rivera, who created this unique style of cheesecake at his restaurant, La Viña, in San Sabastian, Spain. It grew dramatically in popularity during the pandemic as both professional and home bakers tried to recreate the experience of the illustrious tarta de queso La Viña for themselves.