Baking the Perfect Birthday Cake

One of life's greatest pleasures is baking birthday cakes for your loved ones. After all, birthdays are special occasion worthy to be celebrated with the best birthday cake you can come up with! The best, of course, means a scrumptious cake with attractive icing and decorations, which any birthday boy or girl will be proud to share with guests.

Here are practical tips to bake the perfect birthday cake to top the birthday cakes of prior years, if that is possible.

Ask the Birthday Celebrant

If the birthday celebrant is sufficiently old to express his/her preference for a birthday cake, then don't hesitate to ask. Above all others, it is the birthday boy/girl whom you must please with the cake - that is, if it is not meant to be a surprise. You can always just think back to his/her favorite cake flavor and bake it. Just make sure that the icing and the cake itself complement each other.

Make the Icing on the Cake

And speaking of icing, there are two basic things to consider:

Colors - Not only should the colors of the icing reflect the theme of the party but it should also not be too messy for the guests to handle and eat. For example, bright red buttercream icing can readily stain people clothes especially if you instructed the guests to come in white ensembles.

Consistency - You may have to tweak the icing recipe to complement the weather lest it melts into semi-liquid or hardens into solid rock. For example, in hot weather, you must add more icing powder and sugar to make it thicker.

You can either make the icing the day before or make it as you wait for the cake to bake. Either way, is fine although some icings taste better when fresh.

Bake the Cake

Well, of course, it is always a good idea to bake the cake at least a day before the party. This way, you still have time to fix the trimmings, apply the icing and place the decorations on the cake. You can even experiment with said accessories so as to get the best effect possible.

When baking the cake, it is always recommended to follow the instructions in regards to types and measurements of ingredients as well as baking time and temperature. More often than not, you want to lessen experimentation since it is a special cake that you want to taste as yummy as it looks.

Also, it is often better to make the cake as simple as possible especially for children. You can stick to sponge cake or chocolate cake since the decorations and the icing is the primary attractions for them. With adults, you can experiment with cakes not usually associated with birthdays like red velvet cake and devil's food cake.

Just keep in mind that birthday cakes are often the center of the celebration where the food is concerned. As such, it pays to keep it scrumptious on the inside but with little effort on your part and attractive on the inside with your artistic inclinations seen in full force.

Birthday Cake History

The birthday cake has been an integral part of the birthday tradition in Western cultures. The cake is served to a person on his or her birthday, and is often decorated with small novelty candles, with the person's name and/or a message of congratulations inscribed with icing. The phrase "Happy Birthday" did not appear on birthday cakes until the song Happy Birthday to You was popularized in the early 1900s.

Tradition holds that the person with the birthday may make a wish, which will come true if all the candles can be blown out in one breath. US patent 6319530 relates to a "method of photocopying an image onto an edible web for decorating iced baked goods." This invention enables one to ink jet print a food-grade color photograph on the cake surface.

History of Birthday Cake can be traced back to the ancient Greeks who made round or moon shaped honey cakes or bread and took it to the temple of Artemis -the Goddess of Moon. Some scholars, however, believe that the tradition of Birthday cake started in Germany in middle Ages. This special birthday cake later reemerged in Germany as a Kinderfest or the birthday celebrations of a young child. Germans also baked another special kind of a cake called Geburtstagorten as it was baked in layers. This was sweeter that the coarse and bread like cake that were usually made at that time.

In earlier times, Birthday cakes were mostly round in shape. Scholars associate religious beliefs and technical compulsions for the same. Greeks offered round shape cake to the Goddess of Moon - Artemis as it signified moon. They even placed candles on the cake to make the cake glow like the moon.

Technical reason given for the roundness of the cake is that most cakes we know off advanced from the bread. In ancient times breads and cakes were made by hand. Typically, these were fashioned into round balls and baked on hearthstones or in low, shallow pans. Hence, these naturally relaxed into round shapes. With the progress of times baking pans of various shapes were developed and today we see cakes in imaginative shapes and sizes.

In medieval times people of England used to place symbolic objects like coins, rings and thimbles in the batter of the cake. It was believed that those who found coin in the cake would be wealthy while the unlucky finder of the thimble would never marry. If the cake fell while baking it was considered to be a bad omen and signified bad luck for the person in the coming year.