My son, Maxwell, turned 3 months old last week. When the first contractions began the day before he was born, I started to make him a cake to distract myself from early labour: the famous Milk Bar funfetti Birthday Cake, a “birthday” cake in a very literal sense. I managed to bake the actual cake before things got too intense to continue and I had to put it unfinished in the freezer to deal with at some point in the future. A little over twenty-four hours later, I had a baby in my arms. Six weeks after that I had my feet under me enough to finish assembling the cake. And now, another eight weeks later, I’m finally getting around to posting about it – because newborns and postpartum and learning to breastfeed are NO JOKE!

Newborn Max, and 3 month old Max keeping me company on the couch while I work on this post 🙂

Obviously Max was unable to appreciate it, but as his Mama, I can tell you that this cake is delicious and its reputation is well deserved. And yes it’s a bit of a project with all the various components – layers of cake, frosting, and flavoured streusel-like “crumb” – but they really do create the perfect textural and flavour combination that is worth the effort. This particular cake is meant to capture the nostalgia of a funfetti cake from a boxed mix, aka memories of childhood birthday parties. I don’t have those particular memories so instead of sourcing some of the specific ingredients to mimic the taste, such as shortening and clear vanilla extract, I just used what was in my kitchen, which was butter and vanilla bean paste. And instead of the Milk Bar frosting (which calls for additional special ingredients), I used the Ermine Frosting recipe in Shauna Sever’s book Midwest Made. Made with a cooked roux of flour, milk, and sugar and then beat with butter to a mousse-like consistency, its subtle vanilla and almond flavour was excellent against the Milk Bar funfetti cake.

As mentioned, this is a bit of a complicated cake and because it’s already taken me forever to write about it, I’m only going to post the Ermine Frosting recipe – which is excellent with this cake but would also be fantastic on pretty much any other cake, especially if you aren’t a fan of overly sweet confectioner’s sugar frostings. The entire cake recipe is available online in several places, including on the Milk Bar website, but here’s a quick run-down: You bake a sheet cake, stamp out 3 rounds, and stack them up in a round cake form (lined with acetate or parchment paper) layered between frosting and crumb. When you take the well-chilled cake out of the form and pull off the acetate / parchment, you get a wonderfully “naked” cake with visible layers, suitable for birthdays of all kinds 🙂

Ermine Frosting

From Midwest Made by Shauna Sever. Makes about 3 cups, enough to generously frost 1 Milk Bar Birthday Cake. Click here for a printable PDF of the recipe.

In a medium saucepan, whisk together:

1/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour

1 cup whole milk

1 cup granulated white sugar

1/4 tsp fine sea salt

Place the pan over medium heat and continue to whisk until it comes to a boil. Boil, stirring constantly, for a full minute to thicken completely, until it becomes a pudding-like consistency.

Remove the pan from the heat and scrape the mixture into a shallow bowl. Press plastic wrap directly to the surface of the mixture and allow to cool completely to room temperature. You can speed this up by chilling in the fridge, but allow it to come back to room temperature before proceeding.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, combine:

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp almond extract

Whip on high speed until very pale and fluffy.

Add the room temperature cooked flour mixture and continue to beat, scraping down the bowl often, until very light, fluffy, and mousse-like. Use immediately.

To use this frosting in the Milk Bar Birthday Cake, follow the recipe for the cake, cake soak, and crumb. Assemble as directed but use this frosting instead.