April 26th 2020 was my son's 20th birthday. It was hard to celebrate. The best thing we did was get him a birthday present which was a t-shirt on which were written the words "Coronavirus ruined my birthday."
He'd asked me to bake a cake for his birthday which was fine by me. I started getting to work on it in the morning only to discover there was no sugar in the house! Really there was no choice, I had to go to the store even though I'm trying to shop only once every 2 weeks. One thing that impressed me was that they have a guy sitting in the entry way holding up an iPad with a number on it; the number of people in the store. OK, probably the number of shoppers. Still it was nice to know that it wasn't super-crowded (I was #43).
It was only when I was mostly finished that I noticed the markings on the floor indicating the directions of the aisles! I may have violated them unwittingly. I'll know better next time.
Technically, I didn't bake him a cake!
I baked 2 cakes; one to have at home and one to take to his work the following day.
The one we had at home was an orange flavored yellow cake. I don't believe in box mixes, so this was made from scratch, mostly following a recipe from Judy Rosenberg's wonderful book "The All Butter, Fresh Cream, Sugar Packed, No Holds Barred, Baking Book". I made her sour cream golden layer cake, but added peel from a navel orange. I tried making an orange flavored version of the lemon custard as a filling between the two layers but can't have cooked it long enough as it never set fully. Oh well, it was nice to eat on its own. For the frosting, I switched to The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum. I was going to make her Neoclassic Buttercream but that called for corn syrup which, you've guessed it, I didn't have any in the house. Instead I made the Classic Buttercream which just calls for sugar. Again, I flavored it with orange peel and a few drops of orange essence using the latter very sparingly as it can be bitter.
The second cake was much simpler; I'd found a nice recipe for a flourless chocolate cake with a mocha whipped cream frosting. According to my son, the cake was good, but next time, find a better frosting. I think if I do it again I'll make a chocolate ganache.
What did I learn?
- You can always do something to celebrate, even in the weird times we have now!
- Baking is easier than plumbing as it only needs one trip to the store, not four.