"Are you making your own birthday cake?" 🎂
Helllll no.
The last two weeks have been a nonstop rush of working (baking, frosting, delivering cakes) and celebrating (partying, dining out, blowing out birthday candles and sending “thank you 🥹” texts back to all of my friends). I made the biggest cakes I ever have last weekend — enough to feed 160 wedding guests.
Immediately after dropping those off, I had a drink with my oldest friend for our birthdays while we waited for the rest of our friends to show up, a few of which brought us birthday cakes. Despite making everyone else’s, I never make my own birthday cake. I like having something special and surprising, something someone else put a lot of time and effort and love into on my birthday. Today’s letter is about where my favorite birthday cakes over the years have come from.
I didn’t have any cake on my actual birthday, which tragically fell on Election Day this year. Instead, I ordered a hot, buttery dessert at my favorite restaurant. It came with a fat scoop of cold, creamy, very vanilla ice cream and was a perfectly sweet and lovely treat to have before checking my phone to confirm the outcome that had been looming in the air all day had in fact happened.
If it’s not your birthday, may I suggest finding some much needed sweetness another way: join me in drinking my way through this holiday cold foam menu. I heard my pumpkin crumb latte sundae at Caffe Panna is sold out now, but the ethereally airy, custard-like caffe latte soft serve (now accessorized with crunchy Oreo brittle and a glug of fudge) is worth the trip. Or, just order a cake for absolutely no reason. Invite your friends over and serve a small one, buy a big one and freeze half of the slices. Heating up a frozen slice of cake in the microwave until the cake softens and its frosting is molten is something I do more often than I want to admit to all of you right now.
Baked has a menu of very reasonably priced, gorgeous cakes in fun flavors like tart lemon drop, minty grasshopper and caramel apple. I used to drive out to Red Hook with my dad to pick up my birthday cakes from here. We worked our way through most of the menu over the years, though I’ve never noticed this clever stump du noel that I’m now thinking could make an appearance at my holiday party this season.
Once upon a time a married couple owned two bakeries, one in Park Slope and another on the Upper East Side, both called Two Little Red Hens. When they got divorced, the husband kept the newer location uptown and the name, and the wife got the original location, which she renamed Ladybird Bakery. Twenty years later, this couple and their bakeries are still drama-ridden — Two Little Red Hens closed during the pandemic and has been “moving to a new location!” since 2021. Some people are still holding out hope that that’s true:
There was a short-lived scare this summer that Ladybird was closing, too, and then a rumor that the owners of Pasta Louise were the reason behind the closure. That turned out to be a lie, and Ladybird moved just a few blocks away, which is great news for anyone who loves chocolate cake. Their Brooklyn Blackout cake, filled with pudding and covered in a thick coating of glossy fudge ganache, is, to me, best eaten cold. Their carrot and red velvet cakes are also exceptionally good.
I’d get a cake from Billy's Bakery or Sugar Sweet Sunshine (or a vat of one of their icebox cake-esque puddings) over Magnolia Bakery most days, unless it was their banana cake with milky chocolate buttercream. You have to custom order that flavor combination, but while you’re at it, you can also have them print any image on your cake. We’ve gotten photos of my sister’s crushes plastered on her birthday cakes twice:
The brightest, softest, richest red velvet cake I know of is made by Cake Man Raven, who you can straight up text about ordering a whole cake. His cream cheese frosting, too, is a perfect prototype: thick, silky and tart.
The cake menu at ByClio is a long list of unique, decadent, delicious-sounding flavors. You could browse it and pick whatever calls to you, but I must tell you that ever since my first slice of mocha cake, I don’t go within a 10 block radius of this bakery without stopping in for a slice. It’s a mind blowing combo of dark chocolate pudding, dense chocolate cake and milky espresso mousse and is my dream birthday, celebration, everyday cake.
Mah Ze Dahr makes another chocolate cake worth talking about, one that a lot of people sleep on. They call it the Devil in Ganache. Dark, silky, gently whipped ganache takes the place of traditional frosting. The cake layers, too, are richer and denser than a classic chocolate cake. These have an extraordinarily tight crumb, which makes sticking a fork in feel like laying on a memory foam pillow. It’s a short, unassuming cake, but I’m telling you, it’s worthy of being a birthday cake.
I grew up eating Little Pie Company’s applesauce carrot and old-fashioned chocolate cakes. They came in so many sizes, including a tiny, 4-inch one, which my friends and I would often buy for no reason at all. The carrot cake is heavily spiced and walnuts find themselves both baked into the batter and folded into its super sweet cream cheese frosting.
Their chocolate cake is drier and lighter, with a much gentler cocoa flavor than the rest of the intense fudge-forward cakes I suggested. They used to make a red velvet cake too, but it seems to have been nixed in their recent rebrand, along with their stunning old logo. Sad.
Another Hell’s Kitchen legend is Cupcake Cafe, whose storefront is closed, website is suspect and Instagram account hasn’t been active in over a year. Still, you can call and order a custom cake or box of cupcakes, which are arguably even more beautiful than the cakes. The stunning floral piping work is unmatched, and I’ve never tasted a buttercream that made me understand its name better than theirs. I prefer the bittersweet chocolate frosting, but like it on the soft yellow cake just as much as the light and subtle chocolate one. These cakes are works of art — bringing someone one certainly counts as giving them a gift.
NEXT WEEK
I guess it’s time to talk about Thanksgiving.
Still holding out for Two Little Red Hens reopening 😔
Happy Birthday and thanks for the cake primer! Unfortunately, I spent your birthday banging my head up against the wall and screaming into the void but I’ll toast you today.