White Family Birthday Cake
So the 29th was Nick’s birthday, and we celebrated it by…doing nothing. Actually, that’s a lie. I played tennis and Nick did some work at night. But for the weekend of the 4th, we’re up in Tahoe with the family, spending quality bonding time with our nephews who have grown up so much since the last time we saw them. They’re both incredibly cute, and entertaining in their own way. Simon’s very talkative and pretty much says whatever comes to his mind. Eli’s a tank—he’s huge for his age, and essentially marches on and doesn’t care what’s in his way. Actually, it was a bit scary when after he climbed up a flight of stairs, he immediately turned around and started walking to the top of the staircase, and with no hesitation, began walking down it. Unfortunately, he’s not adept enough to walk down stairs, but he does know the butt scooting method. So after taking that first step, he basically fell forward, but Nick was there to catch him. However, we were both so stunned that he wasn’t fearful of the stairs at all, especially since Simon was extremely terrified of going down a flight of stairs.
Back to Nick’s birthday, apparently there’s this tradition in the White family that at every birthday, they have a certain cake. It’s made with:
1 box of Betty Crocker Devil’s Food Cake Mix
The recipe for buttercream frosting on the package of C&H powdered sugar
Melted unsweetened chocolate
From what I understand, the story of this cake dates back to Nick’s grandmother, Mildred. She would make this specific cake for everyone’s birthday, which is why it became such a tradition in the family. For the entire time that I’ve known Nick, I have refused to make this cake due to the horrendous nature of the ingredients (mainly, the cake mix). But this year, with the whole family together, I gave in and decided to bake this cake.
So I haven’t used a mix in a long time, and when I was making the batter, I forgot the water. As I was beating the batter, I was thinking, wow, Betty Crocker must have changed her formula because this is like paste. Also, we didn’t have any vegetable oil, so we used olive oil instead. I soon realized my mistake and added the water, so it was fine in the end. Once the cakes were cooled, I leveled them off so that they would layer better, but I was already ruining the rustic nature of the cake since Grandma Mildred never did that. Actually, leveling the cake ended up being a good thing since the nephews were finished with their dinner (they were fed earlier than our dinner so that they could go to sleep at a reasonable time), and they wanted cake. So we used the cut off pieces and slapped on some frosting and told them that it was Nick’s birthday cake. Since I really only took off the domed part of the two layers, it ended up being a really large whoopee pie—two domed halves with frosting in the middle. Simon and Eli didn’t care what it looked like, they were totally content with the cake.
Next was the drizzling of melted chocolate over the cake. Nick’s mom got a bar of unsweetened Ghirardelli’s chocolate, which I melted and drizzled as artfully as I could over the frosted cake. Nick then told me that my drizzling was too pretty. Grandma Mildred would spoon it on so that there was this huge glob of chocolate and a trail circling around the top of the cake. Here’s what my version of the White family birthday cake looked like:
Since I wasn’t able to use up all of the chocolate, I decided to dip some strawberries and blueberries, not realizing that the chocolate was unsweetened until Jason asks me if it was unsweetened. I said that I didn’t think so (I didn’t read the label on the bar), and then Nick’s mom confirmed that yes, it was an unsweetened bar of chocolate. And then I told everyone that all of the dipped fruit would taste horrible because of the unsweetened chocolate, so Nick decided to sweeten everything by sprinkling powdered sugar over it all:
Nick was very liberal with the powdered sugar, but unfortunately, it didn’t help. The flavor of the unsweetened chocolate overpowers the sugar and the fruit. I think we’ll have to throw it away.
But the cake was a success, even with the olive oil and being 6700 feet above sea level. Everyone was happy, and that’s really all that matters…
[Update by Nick]
The story gets a bit longer, actually. My grandmother (god rest her soul) was a terrible cook. I'm talking grey salmon, grey steak, grey anything. She lost her sense of smell as a child and probably never ate good food her whole life. My father went to college and declared dorm cafeteria food better than his mother's cooking. My mother heard all of this, and later experienced it when visiting home with my father, while they dated. When my mother first tried to make my father a birthday cake, he appreciated it, but said the surprising, "but it's not the way my mother makes it." My mother, shocked that her soon-to-be mother-in-law could make anything taste good, had to find out the secret. Turns out it's just Betty Crocker cake mix and the frosting recipe from the back of the powdered sugar bag. For fun, she drizzled melted Baker's chocolate (unsweetened) on top. My mother had to make The White Family Cake for his birthdays. Once we were born, my mother started making The Cake for us as well.
My brother says once when his wife made The Cake, she tried writing "happy birthday" on top with red frosting. This is unacceptable. It must be as grandma always made it. Tonight, Jerry did good. If anything, a little too good. And the nephews loved it. Thus the tradition of The Cake lives on.