It’s the birthday of my Dutch friend on the 24th and he and his family had just returned from a trip abroad last night, so I wasn’t sure if they’d be up for cake when my day started. Turns out they were, so I chopped a lot of apples and used my Dutch grandmother’s recipe for this cake as a surprise. It’s loaded with apples and nuts.
We almost always made this cake in my family with a streusel topping but a few years ago I decided to top it with a broiled coconut frosting and discovered moist cake nirvana.
Many folks thinks birthday cakes should be chocolate and my friend has so opined in the past. However, as I’d recently made several cakes for birthdays that were chocolate, including for one of his daughters (and next month chocolate cake for the missus), I told him before they left on their trip that I was planning “not chocolate.” I also said that if he decided that it should be chocolate, an email would alert me. I got no such email.
Still, there’s the human dimension, not wanting to disappoint, right? So, when I made Sylvia’s German chocolate cake earlier in the week, I swiped a bit of the batter and made use of two mini loaf pans to act as layers for this purpose. I filled them with the berry filling and covered it with the leftover berry buttercream I’d frozen from the last cake. The result was a mini chocolate and raspberry cake, minus the fresh raspberries (which are at their house.) It will be an unexpected petite birthday surprise, the best kind.
Ms Chef in Seattle 