Birthday Cake

Normally, my boyfriend makes me a cake from scratch for my birthday, but since this year we're both trying to eat healthier and in past years, we've ended up with so much leftover cake that we were eating it for weeks, we decided that this year we'd just do single slices.

We decided to visit the Cake Bake Shop in Broad Ripple, since it's won awards at the Cake & Bake Show in Earl's Court, London, been featured on the Food Network, and on Oprah's O List. Even though the cake slices are rather expensive, we thought we'd give it a try.

The shop itself was surprisingly thoroughly decorated. I've been in plenty of bakeries round the world and they're generally a counter and a glass case and maybe posters or paint to a theme, but nothing like this. There was stuff everywhere. Flowers, china, chandeliers, and it was all very, very pink. There were photos on the wall by the door of all of the celebrities who had eaten there, including Matt Damon and Josh Gad. It was rather posh and I felt a bit under-dressed in my jeans. Even the umbrellas in the outdoor seating area had pink flowers.

Of course, I had to try the chocolate cake that won at the Cake & Bake Show, which is now named Gwendolyn's Famous Earl's Court Chocolate Cake, after the venue. I'm not normally the biggest chocolate cake fan - I often find it to be a bit too rich - but I couldn't come all the way to the Cake Back Shop and not have the one that won. My boyfriend wanted to try the Oprah's 'O' List Mint Chocolate Chip Cake, but they were out, so he had the lemon cake instead. No fancy name for that one - it's just called Lemon Cake.

Personally, I preferred the lemon cake over the award-winning chocolate one, but I always prefer fruit-flavoured cake over chocolate. My requested birthday cake every year is strawberry with cream cheese icing. The chocolate cake I ordered was delicious to be sure, but I'm not the best judge of chocolate cake quality - it was very rich and even though I drank an entire glass of milk I still felt very thirsty afterwards, but the cake slice was so big that I was too full to really drink anything more, so it was a bit uncomfortable for a while. I ought to have eaten less and saved the rest for later.

If we go again, I'd like to try either the Raspberry Champagne Cake or the Carrot Cake - and hopefully my boyfriend would get to try the mint chocolate chip that he'd wanted.