What's new
By:
Filters
Cooking Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Special Birthday Foods

chubbyalaskagriz

chubbyalaskagriz

New member
My little sister's birthday is drawing near and I'm the cake-guy in our family. But since sis isn't really a cake person- so she gets a pair of pecan pies for her special day- the family feasts on one of the pies with candles at her birthday supper- and she keeps the second one all for herself!

Each year Dad gets a Choclate layer-cake, his wife gets angelfood w/ strawberries & whipped cream, my own Mom gets coconut layer cake, my bro-in-law gets German chocolate and my niece gets Lemon layer-cake & my little nephew likes ice-cream cakes.

For my birthday my sister makes me a Mississippi Mud Cake, which is a decadent, rich & gooey chocolate sheet cake brushed with melted marshmallow creme right outta the oven, and drowned in a fudgy/mocha frosting- YUM!

What special birthday treats or meals do you all make for your loved ones? Does anyone make anything particularly special for YOU on your birthday?
 
Yum, Cathy! I recently saw a presentation of Key Lime Pie that I hadn't seen before and I found it interesting. This was a meringue pie and instead of the the lime custard resting under a thick, browned blanket of thick meringue that had been spread completely across the surface in a neat layer, the merigue was instead put into a pastry-bag outfitted w/ a star-tip and cool little "squigllys" of meringue were carefully piped onto sectioned-off portions (8) of the pie so that when the portions were cut each wedge had a centered meringue "squiggly" atop of it. Very cool! (this was in one of the new-membership sign-up books that recently arrived from "The Good Cook" called "Sweety Pies" by Patty Pinner.)
 
Oh, great thread!

I'm the cake person in our family too.

My brother always gets poppyseed cake. My sister usually gets banana cake layered with raspberries or blueberries, but this year she requested deep dark chocolate-orange cake. My dad gets coconut layer cake. My mom gets chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. My husband gets peanut butter cake with peanut butter buttercream filling and chocolate frosting.

Every year my mom bakes me a Maine blueberry cake with cream cheese frosting that we first had on a clambake on an island off the coast near Damariscotta when I was a kid. It took years to find the exact cake, but she did.

This Sunday, my middle little guy turns three, and he requested a vanilla baseball cake. That will be fun.

We definitely love our cake in my family.
 
I'm not, alas, a baker. :( So if anyone in this family wants a special cake or other confection for a birthday, well, that's what God gave us bakeries for.
 
Your family's favs sound great SP! Your hubby's taste for peanut-butter makes him a virtuous man, in my book! And blueberies- I lov'em! (I was shocked to hear on the radio a couple mornings ago that blueberries are on many folks' list of top foods they dislike! What's wrong with these folks?) I too love banana cake. I love heavy, chilled moist layers stacked under thick fudge frosting. I also make a raspberry-banana icebox cake- stack 3-4 layers wrapped in decadent cream cheese frosting with fresh raspberies tucked between the layers, then pipe/drag a web of raspberry puree atop it all and stud each portioned wedge with a curly-q of cream cheese crowned by a red berry. Always a popular crowd-pleaser!
 
Cathy- one could fashion a little trough outta aluminum-foil to wrap around your bottom-lip and bungee-cord back behind your ears sun-glasses-style to catch the drool!
 
StickyPirate said:
Every year my mom bakes me a Maine blueberry cake with cream cheese frosting that we first had on a clambake on an island off the coast near Damariscotta when I was a kid. It took years to find the exact cake, but she did.
Click to expand...

Please elaborate on this whole experience. First: The recipe for the cake. You could do a thread under Share Recipes, and it would be so nice if you could share it...then

Second: Tell us all about the Clam Bake I have all my life wanted to go to one and have never yet experienced one! It is something I would love to hear your accounting of, down to the smell of the seaweed as the seafood was being steamed, to the taste..... and just every detail you remember. If you have time to type it for us!

Thank you so much, Cathy
 
I'm w/ you, mama... I ain't a picky eater- plus I know the work and good intentions it takes for someone to go to any amount of trouble at all. I'd enjoy & appreciate toast & jelly if someone shared it with me!
 
Ditto CAG!

A cup of tea, some toast or bagels or a piece of coffee cake fresh from the oven - nice conversation.

As the years go by - the birthdays disappear - and the family members are gone.
 
OK. Sesame Street is on...

...so I have time to type.

We took a family vacation to Maine when I was 9. My parents saw a brochure for a clambake on the bulletin board at the local grocery store. We took a ferry boat to an island not far off the coast.

Once on the island, the whole crowd sat at wooden picnic tables and was served the most wonderful clam chowder ("lahst cahl for chowdah" is still a favorite family quote), corn on the cob, and I forget what else because I was so picky at nine I probably refused to eat the rest of the meal, more's the tragedy.

When the meal was done, trays of blueberry cake were brought out. It was a simple, from-scratch moist white cake studded with fat Maine blueberries...delicately flavored so as not to overpower the berries, with cream cheese frosting. Maybe it was the salty cool air that whetted our appetites or just the magic of the whole evening, but we all agreed that it was the best dessert we had ever had. We spent the rest of our time on the island exploring, climbing up and down hills, chasing sea birds, watching the sun set over the water. We returned to the mainland on the ferry still tasting that cake.

My mom tried various recipes for years, attempting to duplicate the blueberry cake. She only tested cakes in NJ's blueberry season, and every year her attempts were delicious, but not THE CAKE. Then she stumbled across a New England cookbook - I don't remember which one, but it may have been one of those paperback local conglomerations of recipes you find in gift shops. We took our first bite and...could it be? Yes. The cake of our memories at last...now savored every year in blueberry season, for my birthday.
 
Last edited:
That is a fabulous story SP! I just love fresh blueberries, myself. (Has anyone seen the cookbook "True Blueberry"? (Let me go find the link real quick... I'll be right back...) Anyway, it's very similar in style to one of Ina's books- though about half the thickness/page-count... great recipes, lotsa fantastic photos- very inspiring!


Amazon.com: True Blueberry: Delicious Recipes for Every Meal: Linda Dannenberg, Zeva Oelbaum: Books

Up in Alaska we enjoyed riverside and sea side grillings, bakes and such too. I worked at a lodge on a bluff overlooking the world's best-known king salmon fishing stream where every world-record king was caught every year (always around a HUNDRED lbs.!)- the Kenai River. Ate many a yummy salmon just-outta-the-water there on a rocky stretch of beach.

Also worked on two different islands- Dutch Harbor, on the island of Unalaska out on the Aleutian chain... and Admiralty Island- a 40 minute ferry ride from Juneau in South-East... enjoyed clams, crab, and halibut at seaside bonfires many a sunny summer night!

(quick-click the link below to see a portion of the island and the Silver-Mine Camp I cooked at and managed for 3+ years! The multiple red buildings are the actual camp- they're historic structures formerly a 1910-1950's salmon cannery... one of the tiny red buildings on the far right was the 2-room w/ a loft cabin Art and I resided in on premise. i9 miles up the mountain rom camp.)

Anyway, just seems like everything tastes better when you're out in the fresh air and have worked hard to catch it/pick-it or otherwise earn it, and have worked-up and big honest appetite!

Greens Creek Mining Company
 
Last edited:
OK Chub, you're lethal with the cookbook recs. I already ordered the one about the lobsters and blueberries. Now I have my eye on this blueberry one.

My Amazon addiction is raging.
 
Sorry, SP! I'm an addict, too! But at least the amazingly cheap USED prices at Amazon help ease the blow. I've rarely ordered a NEW book of any kind in years. And I've never received a USED book in less than pristine, new-looking condition, UNLESS no copies were available and I went into the purchase knowing before hand that the book was old and showed signs of wear, etc.
 
Yeah, I love those used copies too. I actually tried selling off some books that way on Amazon, but they took such a huge cut that I ended up making literally less than 5 cents profit on each book. I guess you have to be a high-volume bookseller for it to be worthwhile.

My latest favorite purchase was David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. Yesterday I made pina colada sherbet and it's to die for.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top