Today is my birthday, Part II

I remember when I was young and going over to one of my grandmothers for my birthday dinner. They were fantastic. For desert there would of course be cake. Each year she would make a devil’s food cake with vanilla frosting. This was no ordinary frosting. It was not out of a can. It was homemade. But very special indeed. It would harden onto the cake. Almost like a meringue. Now my birthday is of course in June. And sometimes the weather would be warm. This would affect the frosting.

My grandmother made a layer cake. She would frost between the layers and then of course around the sides of the cake. Now if it was warm the frosting wouldn’t harden correctly. The layers tended to slide apart. To prevent this from happening my grandmother would put tooth picks in the cake to keep the layers together. The first time she did this she cautioned everyone that there were tooth picks. I believe the first time it was done I ended up getting one of the tooth picks. From then on whenever she made the cake and she sometimes made a some variation of it for all our birthdays, there would be tooth picks in it whether needed or not. (My dad’s is also in June and my brother and mom’s are in August.) So the goal was to actually find a tooth pick and it was supposed to bring you good luck for the day.

I wish I could find the recipe for that frosting because it was great. And it became part of a wonderful tradition in our family.