Buttery Birthday Cake

I make a lot of cakes. As my friends and I have gotten older and moved away from our parents, store bought cakes have become the norm. I feel guilty somehow to let my loved ones cut into a cake made without love on a special occasion. I, therefore, volunteer to make birthday, graduation, anniversary, and baby shower cakes, not to mention selling a cake here and there. I'm explaining all this so that you can share my annoyance and dismay when, last night, it took me 6 hours and 2 attempts to finish one two-layer birthday cake. Yes, you read it right, six hours. To put this into perspective, it took me 12 hours to make my three-tiered wedding cake, including decoration.

The main reason that my first attempt cake failed were the crappy baking pans. These happen to be my "new" pans, replacements for my old trusty ones. For some reason, I felt that my no-name, consistently good pans were sub par to Wilton brand ones. Wilton is THE name in baking, right? I purchased 2 round cake pans and 1 baking sheet. All of these are crap. They burn food, cook unevenly and tout themselves to be extremely non-stick, although food always sticks, even with greasing. I unsuccessfully pulled out all the tricks trying to make these pans work, including lowering temperatures and cooking times. The pans have been relegated to expensive garlic toast makers.















All of that aside, this butter cake was a birthday gift for one of my friends. (I love you man or I would have totally bought one of those grocery store cakes.) My second attempt, using my trusty, scratched-up, no-name pans was successful. I used a recipe from the Cake Bible for the actual cake and frosted it with my own Speedy Vanilla Bean Frosting. The cake itself is dense, buttery and melt-in-your-mouth if ever so slightly dry, although my friends were polite enough to disagree. The vanilla bean lends a perfumey, heady quality to the frosting that makes such a simple combination come alive and seem exotic.

We are children of the 80s and need our bursts of color. Our mothers injected enough food coloring into our little bodies so that if our birthday cake isn't some shade of cartoon character then we feel deprived. This cake was actually much more elegant before I chose to make it Smurf colored. But, hey, what are you going to do? At least we weren't born a decade earlier; the whole cake would have been a psychedelic, liquor-infused jello concoction and probably topped with coconut.

Makes one 9", 2 or 3 layer cake

6 egg yolks
1 c. milk
2¼ tsp vanilla
3 c. sifted cake flour
1½ c. sugar
1 tbsp + 1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
12 tbsp (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1. Preheat oven 350°F.
2. Grease and flour cake pans.
3. In a medium bowl, lightly combine egg yolks, ¼ c. milk, and vanilla.
4. In a separate bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Mix on low for 30 sec to blend.
5. Add butter and ¾ c. milk to the dry ingredients.
6. Mix on low until moistened. Increase speed to medium (high if using hand mixer) and beat for 1½ min.
7. Scrape down sides and add egg mixture in thirds, beating after each addition.
8. Pour batter into prepared pans, smoothing the surface.
9. Bake 25-35 min or until a toothpick comes out clean.
10. Cool in pans for 10 min, then cool completely on wire rack.
11. Frost as desired.