A Summer of Birthday Bakes
Marbled Funfetti Cake, Squiggly Cupcakes, Carrot Cake Donuts, and Cosmic Brownies
It’s birthday week in our house! The fact that my husband’s birthday is only 3 days a part from mine feels somewhat convenient. Over the last decade, we’ve celebrated with joint birthday parties and a week’s worth of extra special meals. Reuben’s birthday was yesterday (Monday) and I spent the afternoon making these carrot cake donuts while attempting to hide the whole process from him while he was working from home. Reuben is not really a cake guy, but he does love carrot cake so I make an iteration of this every birthday. Normally by the time my birthday rolls around we’re a little tired of cake, which is fine by me because all I want for my birthday are dumplings and to not cook all day! On Thursday I’m thinking of going out for a dim sum lunch, a long swim, and bringing home a new fruit tree.
The birthday spirit got me reflecting about all the fun summer birthday bakes I’ve made so far! So many fellow summer birthday babies! I used to love making my own birthday cake, but I find a lot more enjoyment in making birthday cakes for other people. Making people feel special is what I live for. I like to ask the birthday person what their general cake preferences are and depending on what they say I’ll surprise them with something! I love parameters and a prompt so it turns out to be a fun challenge for me. Some responses I’ve gotten have been:
“Not ube.”
“Creamy, light, and fruity! and I’m lactose intolerant.”
“Funfetti, cookie cakes, yellow cake with chocolate frosting.”
Often the answers are hilarious and tend to lean into their childlike wonderment. I get so inspired by people’s responses and end up creating cakes/bakes that I normally wouldn’t come up with myself. So here’s a little round up of this summer’s birthday cakes! Some with recipes too!
I’m always looking for more cake inspiration so what would be your birthday cake preferences?
Reuben’s Carrot Cake (donut edition)
makes about 12 donuts or one 8-inch cake
This is a lighter and airier carrot cake! It tastes like Fall, making it an unlikely summer birthday cake but we still love it. It’s heavy on the spices like cinnamon and ground ginger, some Chinese five spice adds a little extra complexity and slight savoriness to cakes that helps balance the sweet cream cheese frosting! I think it tastes best cold from the fridge but you do you!
You can bake this as an 8” cake instead of in a donut cake pan.
for the cake:
150g (1 1/4 cups) all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp Chinese five spice
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp coarse salt
90g (1/2 cup) olive oil
155g (1/2 cup) honey
50g (1/4 cup) brown sugar
70g (1/4 cup) greek yogurt
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups (150g) grated carrots
for the frosting:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
6 oz unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
Preheat the oven to 350F degrees and brush a donut pan with nonstick spray or line the bottom of an 8-inch cake pan with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, whisk to combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, chinese five spice, ground ginger, and salt.
In a large bowl, whisk to combine olive oil, honey, brown sugar, greek yogurt, eggs, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and mix until mostly combined, with a few streaks of flour left. Add the carrots and mix until combined.
Fill a piping bag or resealable bag with the cake batter and fill the donut pan, enough batter until it’s about 1/4” under the edge of the pan. Otherwise, pour the batter into the cake pan. Bake until the cake is set and cooked through, 13 to 15 minutes for the donuts and 22 to 25 minutes for an 8-inch cake. Transfer onto a wire rack and allow the cakes to cool before removing from the pan. Allow the cakes to fully cool before decorating.
To make the frosting, place the cream cheese and butter in the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium until light and airy, 2 to 3 minutes. Gradually add the powdered sugar (add a little more if you prefer it more sweet) and mix on low speed until fully incorporated. Add salt and mix on medium for one more minute until light and airy.
Frost and decorate the donuts or cake however you like!
Honey Lemon Cupcakes with Blueberry Mascarpone Buttercream
makes 18 cupcakes
I made these for a friend’s birthday celebration just this past weekend. I wasn’t sure if we would be somewhere with a kitchen knife and I didn’t really want to carry one around in my purse so I opted for cupcakes for easy sharing. I think a big squiggle of buttercream will be the only way I’ll ever decorate a cupcake because it’s so easy and cute. When you push all the cupcakes together it has a visual effect of one cohesive cake which is nice too!
I used a tried and true honey cake with cream cheese frosting that I’ve been making for years as the base. It’s from the blog and when I clicked on the link I remembered that I made this cake for one of our birthday picnics in the park in 2017! The original cake is so good, really rich and moist. For these cupcakes, I scaled down the recipe by 75% and added a lot of lemon zest and a little lemon juice into the cake batter. The buttercream is dyed a pale lavender with the help of blueberry jam and I used
For the cake:
350g (3 cups) cake flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp coarse salt
170g (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
150g (3/4 cup) sugar
103g (1/3 cup) honey
2 tsp vanilla
4 large eggs
zest and juice of 1 large lemon
380g (1 1/2 cups) buttermilk
For the frosting:
227g (2 sticks), softened
227g (8 oz) mascarpone
1/4 cup blueberry jam
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 tbsp vanilla
pinch of salt
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Place cupcake liners in your cupcake tin.
In a medium bowl, whisk to combine cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix on medium speed the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add in honey and vanilla and mix until incorporated, about a minute. Add your eggs one at a time and beat until incorporated each time. Reduce the speed to low and add lemon zest, juice, and buttermilk. The batter will look curdled, but don't freak out! Gradually add your flour mixture in batches. Mix on low until well combined.
Scoop the batter into your prepared cupcake pan. Bake until golden brown and set, 14 to 16 minutes. Allow the cupcakes to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove cake from the pan and allow to completely cool on a wire rack.
In the bowl of the standmixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the butter and mascarpone on medium speed until light and airy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the blueberry jam and mix until it takes on a pale purple color. Gradually add the powdered sugar and mix on low speed until fully incorporated. Add vanilla and salt and mix on medium speed until light and airy, about 1 minute.
Fill a piping bag (fitted with your tip of choice) with the butter cream and decorate the cupcakes. Top the cupcakes with additional blueberries!
Funfetti + Strawberry Marbled Cake with a Cookie Cake Topper!
I think this cake might very well be the 90s childhood cake of my dreams! And Rebecca’s too, who I made this magical cake for!
I used Sally’s Strawberry Cake and Molly’s Sprinkle Cake recipes and decided to marble them for one of the layers. I wasn’t prepared to do cake math when I was making this so I did end up with about 2 extra layers of cake that I used to practice my decorating skills on another time.
The bottom layer if full sprinkle cake, the middle was marbled, and the top layer was a full strawberry cake. I clad the cake in my cream cheese frosting (above) but probably make a triple batch in order to cover the whole things. For the cookie cake on top, I made my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe (you can use any cookie recipe you like), but removed the chocolate chips and swirled in strawberry compote instead (it was leftover from the strawberry cake recipe). I baked the cookie cake in a 6” cake pan, which made for the perfect size cookie to top an 8” cake!
Dairy-free Mango Mousse Cake
This recipe from my first book, Mooncakes and Milk Bread! It’s bigger, coming in at 8” diameter, and contains dairy. I make a smaller dairy-free version for my friend, San San, and loaded it with lots of mango on top. For the dairy-free version I started by swapping out coconut cream for the heavy cream in the mousse but the coconut cream I bought (not my normal brand) was absolutely foul and disgusting. It wouldn’t whip and just curdled as soon as I mixed it. I grabbed a can of full fat coconut milk from my favorite brand (Arroyo-D or Chaokoh only) and mixed that into the mango puree with gelatin instead. I hoped and prayed that it would set and it did! I didn’t a chance to try a slice from SanSan said it was great!
Cosmic Brownies
I found cosmic brownie sprinkles at the grocery store the few weeks ago and can’t stop making these brownies! Erin’s recipe is my favorite for fudge brownies. She also has a recipe that’s closer to actual cosmic brownies on her site that includes frosting, but I’ve essentially memorized her fudgy brownie recipe so I just default to those.
I brought these to a friend’s birthday bbq and was shocked how many people didn’t know what a cosmic brownie was! Was this more of regional Midwest thing? Because they were foundational to my school lunches…
Passionfruit Apple Tarte Tatin
Okay, I don’t have a full recipe for this quite yet but I still wanted to share it! I made it for a friend’s 10 year in the Bay picnic, which isn’t really a birthday but something definitely worth celebrating! It tastes for fruity and tropical and oddly somewhat easy to make. Hopefully I’ll have a flushed out recipe to share for this by the end of the summer !
Hope you all have a great week and happy birthday to any other fellow Summer babies!!!
This collection is a dream, thanks for all the inspiration! And happy bday 🖤🖤
I love this idea so much, and I am inspired to maybe start doing this for friends and family! The creative challenge is the most exciting aspect to me! Thank you for sharing all of these gorgeous creations!