CHAPTER 7

SPECIAL OCCASION CAKES

I’VE BROKEN THE CAKES IN THIS BOOK INTO TWO DISTINCT categories: Casual and Fancier. The cakes in this chapter represent the latter, the recipes you’ll want to save for birthdays, baby showers, dinner parties, and the like. If you want to become known for one knockout cake you can make for big-deal life moments, or are looking to start new traditions by way of cake, I’m hoping you can find your forever recipe here.

In a region full of practical, efficient bakers, a person doesn’t need more than one good recipe in each flavor category to have a solid celebration cake canon. That said, the list of cakes in this section is concise, but covers all the bases in terms of having just the right recipe to suit all manner of cake tastes, from fruit and spice to rich and light, and of course, chocolate. (For those wackos who claim they “don’t like cake,” there’s always the pie chapter.)

Note these are recipes requiring forethought. That’s not to say they are difficult recipes; rather, just that you’ll enjoy the process more if you break some of these recipes into steps, making cake layers one day, fillings or frostings the next, that sort of thing. A few of these call for chilling time for maximum enjoyment, so it takes a wee bit of planning, is all. But life’s special occasions, sometimes seeming so few and far between in our busy lives, call for a little extra TLC, wouldn’t you say?