A tale of two cakes
Birthday season continues. There's one thing everyone wants for their birthday. But death doesn't work like that.
My daughters’ birthdays are two days and two years apart. They both fell on Easter bank holiday this year. These young women are twenty and twenty-two years old now. So we had a glorious weekend of cakes, gardens, pubs, old friends and new ones, and family. I wrote a poem in each of their cards. There was an emo-princess cake, referencing a more classic princess cake from long ago in our memories.
Emo-princess was made by my eldest, and she looked and tasted beautiful.
Messing around
The classic princess, made for a sixth or seventh birthday, was made by me and James. It was a weekend evening, the day before the party. We were sitting in our kitchen. Presents were wrapped, arrangements made. A pause in the chaos of work and family life with small children. We had wine. To make the princess, you make the cake in a jug, so it’s shaped like a big skirt. Then you stick the naked doll in the cake. Then you ice her. It’s somewhere between baking, engineering and messing around.
So time travel with me, to that kitchen, sometime in the early 2010s….
We bought fondant icing, which nobody really likes but it looks good, and mostly kids are going to be taking one bite then wandering off. It’s also fun, messing around with fondant icing. You have the cake, with the naked doll sticking out of the top. Unworkably proportioned waist and plastic mounds with no nipples. Slender arms and a premade up face. Somebody’s idea of beauty. To get the fondant icing to stick to the cake and the doll, you need to make it sticky. So we’re in the kitchen, tipsy, with a small dish of apricot jam mixed with warm water. A pastry brush - clogged of course with all the fat it’s ever been used for. Those things are never clean. And the doll, likely fresh from the floor of one the kid’s bedrooms.
Kitschy kitchen
I brush the outside of the cake and the naked doll torso with the sticky liquid, he presses the rolled out icing on top, to make a beautiful white dress, ready to be decorated. The more you work the fondant with your hands, the warmer and more pliant it becomes, also the less white. We’re giggling, chuckling at the task in our hands. Two of us, in our untidy kitchen, full of toys, bills, bookbags, tea, wine and lists of things not to forget. Doing this foolish thing, messing around: now decorating the dress with pink icing and silver balls. What sort of pattern? One that covers the fingerprints in the fondant.
Nowhere else we’d rather be, on a weekend night in London, than tipsy, laughing in our kitchen, the smell of fresh cake, a naked doll with sticky tits, and icing sugar clouding the air. Messing around with all this abundance of ingredients: flour, eggs, joy and hope. An evening in the middle of the ever-rushing, snaky and sneaky river of time which for me now has this glow to it, like I knew, we both knew, right in the middle of that evening, that we were really living, we were really lucky. Actually feeling the feelings, as they happened. Put this moment on the list of things not to forget.
Back to April 2025……
Last week, watching my eldest make the emo-princess version, was equally joyful, and full of feelings. There was no apricot jam as she doesn’t like that, but it wasn’t needed as she went with buttercream, which people actually like. We no longer have princess dolls about the place so we were loaned this one by a friend who has a young child. My daughter’s boyfriend helped with the final construction. There was more laughter, and a beautiful end result. And a lot of jokes about whether the princess is emo, BDSM or a mix of both, with her painted on gloves and multi-coloured hair.
Why isn’t it fair?
The thing is with these birthdays, these moments of joy and coming together, is that they are playful, and the inner child in me just wants things to be fair. We miss him so much I can feel the weight of it in my whole body. I miss having him share these moments with me, his blue eyes meeting mine with humour, with years of intimate knowledge, children growing, year after year. I miss him from their lives, that beautiful father that they had. And on days like this the intensity of the loss is in everything I taste or smell or touch. In cake, in hugs, inside birthday cards. Where are you? Remind me again why you’re not here? Why isn’t it fair?
Magic spell
But as we all know, as we constantly remind children, inner or not, life is unfair. We had abundance, we had luck for years. More than many people will ever have. And on these birthdays, this year, we were surrounded by friends and family and love, and we laughed and cried and played games and ate princess cake, version 2. And we remembered James, created magic spells by saying his name, and reprising all the things he would have done, and brought him into the celebrations. And made more moments not to be forgotten.
This is such a mixture of the lightness and sticky sweetness of love, to the harder parts and realities of life. The way you are, and the way you write is so present and alive. What a beautiful, sad, and soulful moment you hold. Thank you for sharing this with us.
My birthday was on Easter Sunday and we’ve also had 3 months of birthdays and anniversaries. I’m looking forward to May which feels lighter because although these birthdays carry joy they also trigger deep emotions of loss.
On Good Friday we visited my late husband’s family and his dad who is now in a care home. We lost Ute his mum last summer. His brother is clearing out their house so we returned home with photos, a soft toy hippo and stool that John made at school as a child and also several photos of similar birthday cakes. John’s mum enjoyed baking these for several years for my daughter as well as a Yoda cake and several other superhero characters for my son.
We had a good laugh reminiscing about Ute’s cake making. Your post therefore really touched me too. Xx