The Birthday Cake

In case anyone was wondering – and you were all wondering, right? – this is the birthday cake I made for my boyfriend this year.

It’s a tradition that I ask him every year what kind of cake he wants, and in return he gives me not a flavor, but a fairly broad category that I can have fun with.  These have included “fruit”, “cookie”, and “something that most people wouldn’t even want to try based solely on the description”.  Good times.

This year, the challenge was “super spice cake”.  So I made a super-gingery ginger cake with spiced poached pears, and lemon ice cream for a clean counterpoint.

Recipes for the ginger cake and poached pears are both from David Lebovitz‘s Ready For Dessert, one of the smartest cookbook investments I’ve ever made.  Every. Single. Recipe. is flawless, and turns out exactly as described.

The ginger cake (recipe can be found here) has so much ginger in it, you’ll think it’s a typo.  But have faith, because you’ll be rewarded with an incredibly moist cake that’s bursting at the seams with fresh, clean, super ginger flavor.  Did I mention moist?  This cake, cut and covered loosely with plastic wrap at room temperature, did not dry out even a little bit.  Not even the cut edges.  Not even after a week or more.  Absolument incroyable.

The pears, lightly spiced, were a delightful addition, and in any other setting would be stars in their own right.  But here they were clearly in a supporting role.  A similar recipe to the one I used can be found here, on Mr. Lebovitz’s blog.

But the lemon ice cream… oh!, the lemon ice cream.  The recipe (which you can find here) is from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home, by Jeni Britton Bauer.  And people, if you have an ice cream maker, and you don’t have this book, you’re cheating yourself.  It’s not just a gorgeous book to look at, the recipes are inventive and result in textbook-perfect texture for your homemade ice creams, sorbets, and ices.  Listen to this woman, she knows exactly what she’s doing with ice cream.  I might not ever use anyone else’s ice cream recipes.

This lemon ice cream strikes the elusive ideal balance between tart, sweet, and creamy.  Even better, the headnote of the recipe said she developed it to pair with an intense and dark ginger cake.  I was practically forced to make it.  The result couldn’t have been better.  I’m intending to use up part of the remaining ice cream in ginger cookie ice cream sandwiches, it went together so well.

Again, recipes:
Ginger Cake
Poached Pears
Lemon Ice Cream