A Birthday Cake for TSP

Cupcakes from Sarabakescakes.com would make a festive celebration.

W E’RE ONE MONTH old, we Sister Project sisters. Our celebration thus far has consisted mostly of commiseration, via Twitter, Skype and cellphone as we hurry to accomplish the myriad holiday chores we all face. Hopefully, come the New Year, we’ll gather together and raise a toast to our first month of life, and to everyone who’s joined us in this experiment in sisterhood. When we do celebrate, will there be a cake?

In my family, now as in my childhood, birthdays are a pretty big deal. My son, the River, doesn’t eat birthday cake unless it’s at his own party. He doesn’t like it, which his sister and I can’t fathom. But for his special day, he always wants a carrot cake, sometimes with a layer of banana cake in the middle, as well as some chocolate frosting. Yes, I oblige the special requests.

The Rock, my daughter, is all about cupcakes. (And really, who can blame her? She’d go bananas for the princess-y ones above, made by the amazing Sara Schneider of sarabakescakes.com.) During my singleton childhood, birthdays were a big deal, too, but I don’t have a solid memory of a particular birthday cake that I wanted every year (unless you count Baskin-Robbins clown cones, which I did request at least three years in a row).

My parents, however, were a different story. Though my father was partial to German chocolate cake, any celebration for him or, especially, for my mom, involved one of two desserts. Either a chocolate angel pie, a kind of decadent chocolate-pudding filling and a light meringue crust, or, more often, a Queen of Sheba cake.

The latter hails from Julia (that’s Julia Child), my mother’s high priestess of cooking, who writes that it was the first French cake she ever tried, made by her friend and co-author, Simca Beck. Julia gives us no more information about the cake’s origins, but do we really need it? After all, isn’t a cake named for a legendary queen the perfect way to celebrate sisterhood?

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA (REINE DE SABA) CAKE

(The Way to Cook by Julia Child, Knopf, 1989)

Julia says:
A very special cake of rum, amonds, butter and chocolate that is somewhat moist in the center–it literally melts in the mouth…Like most French cakes, it is only an inch and a half high, which makes it easy to serve.

3 oz. bittersweet chocolate
1 oz. unsweetened chocolate
2 Tablespoons strong coffee
1 stick unsweetened butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
3 egg yolks

The egg whites:
3 egg whites (a scant 1/2 cup)
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
a pinch of salt
2 Tablespoons sugar

1/3 cup blanched almonds ground together with 2 tablespoons sugar in the food processor
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup cake flour (scooped and leveled with the back of a knife)

1. Preheat the oven to 325F and set the rack in the lower middle of the oven.
2. Butter and flour an 8 inch round cake pan.
3. Melt the chocolate in the top of a double boiler. When melted, remove from the heat, but keep warm.
4. Cream butter and sugar together with a mixer. When soft and fluffy, add the sugar and beat 1 minute. Add the egg yolks, and beat thoroughly.
5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and continue beating until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the 2 Tablespoons of sugar and continue until you have stiff, shiny peaks.
6. All at once, blend the warm, smoothly melted chocolate and the coffee into the yolk mixture. Stir in the almonds and almond extract. Stir one-quarter of the egg-white mixture into the chocolate mixture.
7. Scoop the rest of the whites over the chocolate mixture and, alternating with sprinkles of the flour, rapidly and delicately fold in the egg whites.
8. Turn the batter into the prepared pan, tilting it in all directions to run the batter up to the rim all around the pan, and set it in the preheated oven.
9. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the cake has puffed to the top of the pan and a toothpick inserted into the cake 2-3 inches from the edge of the pan comes out clean. The center should still be slightly jiggly.
10. Cool the pan on a rack for 15 minutes, and then unmold the cake onto the rack (by placing the rack atop the pan, and flipping both over). Let cool completely–2 hours–before storing or, if desired, icing.

SOFT CHOCOLATE ICING

2 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate
1-1/2 Tablespoons strong coffee or rum
a pinch of salt
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

1. Melt the chocolate with the coffee or rum in a double boiler. Bring the water in the lower pan to a simmer, then remove from heat, add the chocolate and coffee or rum to the top pan, and cover the top pan. After 5 minutes, the chocolate should be smoothly melted. If not, remove the top (chocolate) pan, turn the heat back on to bring the water back up to a simmer under a lower pan, and repeat the process.

2. When the chocolate is smoothly melted, beat in the salt and the butter, one Tablespoon at a time. Put the chocolate pan over a pan of cold water, and continue to beat until cool and firm enough to spread.

3. Turn the icing over the top of the cake, and spread it over the top and sides.

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