027: Ask Yourself, Who Is This For?

On Baking My Son's First Birthday Cake

If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter (thank you! I love having you here :), you may remember that my son has been on the verge of turning one year old. The lead-up to this milestone is a loaded time emotionally for moms, something I did not realize before I became one, and frankly, before other moms began asking me how I was doing as his birthday neared. The first time I was asked I realized I had been a bit of a puddle, and grappling with my feelings without consciously thinking about it. Saying goodbye to his infancy is bittersweet, when the awareness of time rapidly passing is acute.

To celebrate, we planned a very small gathering of family at our home. There was no real agenda, but the one thing I wanted to do was bake a birthday cake. Something classic. I didn’t plan ahead. The morning of I searched “birthday cake” on New York Times Cooking and landed immediately on Alison Roman’s “Classic Birthday Cake” because her recipes are reliable, and the skill level required usually right about where I’m at. I don’t often bake cakes—the layered, frosted, decorated kind—so I wanted an easy recipe.

It was a yellow cake with bittersweet chocolate frosting and sprinkles. I didn’t put a ton of thought into those flavors. This would be his first taste of sugar, so to me the idea of baking a cake was almost ceremonial, and hopefully the first of many, as I’m a sucker for traditions. More ritual-fostering, than utilitarian or practical—at least as far as my intentions went for him and the cake—he’s too little to understand the tradition and intention behind it, let alone what making it for him might mean to me. But all the same, without thinking about it I assumed he would eat some of it (you probably know where this is going). I picked the recipe, asked my mom to watch him (Reed had to work that morning), and headed to the grocery store to pick up light brown sugar, sprinkles, bittersweet chocolate bars, and other odds and ends.

Upon arrival at the store I cruised through the baking area, just to see what cakes they had. Despite everything I just said, there was a part of me that didn’t really want to bake a three-layer birthday cake on that particular day, that was pretty exhausted and stressed out, and knew that store-bought would be an equally fine move. But I was looking half-heartedly. It meant something to me to bake that first birthday cake. Obviously my one-year-old wouldn’t care or remember, even if he was capable of cognizing the fact that I made it, which he’s not. That was sort of irrelevant. Deciding to make it myself was equally about me and my desire to do so. In any case, my fate was sealed the moment I saw that the only offerings were Pina Colada Cake (yum! but never assume everyone likes coconut—plus my husband hates it, lol), and a pretty garish orange and green cake with a shamrock on it for St. Patrick’s Day.

The other issue tempting me to look for a store-bought cake, was related to hardware. I only own one 9-inch cake pan—a springform—and the recipe calls for three so that all three layers can be baked simultaneously without having to go through the production of carving the cake later. Our market didn’t sell cake pans so I posed this conundrum to my mom (herself, a former professional baker). She said we could bake the entire thing in the springform, and slice it later. That’s basically what we did, only we pulled it out after about 10 minutes, worrying that it would overflow into the stove, and transferred an unspecified amount of batter to a slightly smaller cake pan that I have (maybe 7 inch?). To compensate for the size differential, I decided to bake a 2-layer cake, plus a special mini-baby-cake for my son to dig into. I learned later that this is called a “smash cake”—lol parent culture. The frosting was a whole process—I won’t get into it—it’s boring, but I want to emphasize that it was not this (fantastic) recipe’s fault. Thank god my mom was there to advise me and troubleshoot. From that point on, everything went swimmingly. I didn’t f*ck up the cake carving. I made a pretty respectable mini-circle for Tycho’s “smash cake.”. I sliced the larger cake into two slices no problem, and assembled the cake pretty effortlessly. I frosted the cake respectably—nothing fancy there. And my adorable two-year-old nephew Wesley—who was the most excited of us all—was over-the-moon to help me decorate both cakes with sprinkles.

Still I was frazzled baking and hosting, and hadn’t really stopped moving since early that morning when I left for the grocery store. And as you might remember, I’m not a relaxed host. My house is small, and I worry about everyone’s comfort. My mom and I got into a few skirmishes while baking the cake. We planned the baby’s nap poorly so he was still napping just when we planned to eat cake. I made the tough decision to wake him up, mainly because I didn’t want his nap to go too late. I felt a bit judged for waking him up (so much mom guilt involved in momming, y’all).

We all gathered around to sing “Happy Birthday,” and I blew out Tycho’s candle for him before he could burn himself (because of course all he wanted to do was grab the flame). As expected, he was deeply confused by the singing, and stared at us all like we were insane (no surprise there!). But what I didn’t expect was his complete disinterest (dislike?) of the cake! He didn’t eat a morsel of it, and looked disgusted after his taste of frosting. Of course I realize in retrospect that bittersweet chocolate would be an acquired taste for a one-year-old. An intense thing to accompany his first taste of sugar (which is intense as it is). None of this should have made me sad, but I will admit that it sort of did. There was something about the moment that made me feel like I’d failed. Despite myself, I wondered, would he have eaten the store-bought cake?

In the days following, I processed my emotions as they were tied to the cake-baking, conscious of being codependent as I placed undue emphasis on my son’s interest in this dessert. I don’t want to be a parent that places emotional emphasis on food. No one (especially babies and children) is obligated to eat anyone’s cooking. The process of food discovery is fraught as it is. But there I was, hurt by my infant son’s distaste for my baking (lol!), in spite of my attempt to avoid the psychological traps of my own childhood.

As I enjoyed a leftover slice of his birthday cake for breakfast the following day, I thought about how a lot of emotional decisions we think we are making on behalf of/for our children are actually for us, not them. I made the cake for myself, not for my son. I put a lot of emotional weight upon his reaction to a cake that he cannot really appreciate or remember or even have a taste for yet. All of this I knew, yet I felt hurt when he didn’t like it. It’s a useful metaphor for reminding myself that he is going to be his own person. Now that I’ve brought him into the world he doesn’t owe me anything—let alone a taste for cake.

I didn’t feel ashamed of this realization for long though. I’ll work on it! Besides, his birthday was just as much for me as it was for him. So I’m proud of the cake I made for myself (and for our family). All moms deserve the dessert of their choice on their child’s birthday. And it was delicious by the way—did I mention that? His birthday was also a celebration of the work of bringing him into the world, and the work of sheparding him through those first 12 months of life outside of the womb. He doesn’t owe it to me to eat any cake, and I’ll happily eat it myself.

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No recommendations this week ;) xo