Either a snail’s moist web of moonlight, or someone’s hot breath at four a.m. when the night has been too much, has eaten you whole.
This is my life.
It has been sifted through the bones of my body, through blood. It is all that I have.

—Joy Harjo

Happy birthday to me, from me.

In the past two years, I’ve made a departure from my usual pavlova birthday cake, inspired by the many vintage style cakes that flood my instagram discover page (and attracted by the more leisurely time constraints of a “regular” cake as opposed to a delicate, ever-cracking meringue shell).
Interestingly, I have now grown incredibly sick of cake and I don’t think I’ll be making another one until much later into fall or winter. This year alone, 5/9 of my posts have been cake.
Layer cakes are easily my most frequent blog-bake, and I do love the process of decorating them and making each one, in turn, unique. I love how they photograph and I do enjoy buttercream frosting.
But to say they are my favorite dessert to eat would be a total lie.
The tension between making something that I know will 1) taste reasonably good, 2) photograph well and 3) be reliable for other people making the recipe is constantly and steadily pulling on my mind, and it is more often than not a cake dream that supplies itself as the solution to this problem. My perception of other people’s taste and desire has a greater influence than what I, myself, would like to eat. (Of course, this blog can’t only be lemon and citrus desserts, so this isn’t wholly a bad decision.)
I wonder sometimes what my bakes would look like if I wasn’t a photographer/wasn’t a blogger. I think that feeling beholden to this site has been immensely beneficial in keeping me in a state of constant creation and imagination, but has also made my sense of aesthetics keener, sharper, harsher.

This cake is a rehash of a very old recipe I made for my first blogiversary, back in 2013. I can’t bear to actually look back at the cake, because I recall it being rather dry and crumbly, with a drab wallpaper-glue colored frosting job and some appallingly unappetizing photos, so much so that I had to make several black and white.
I am happy with this cake, now—it took hours to painstakingly design and decorate, and still more to photograph.
Nine years from now, perhaps I will judge this one as fiercely as the last.

This birthday centerpiece is built on the sunshine flavor of a passionfruit butter sponge. Rich but with a cutting acidity to balance. A soak in brown sugar syrup helps retain moisture, and lovely fudgy chocolate filling provides bittersweetness.
Clouds of Italian meringue buttercream cushion the whole cake.

As ever, when I make a Lambeth style, frilly, over-decorated cake, I have to give a disclaimer.
This recipe is for people who really, really appreciate frosting and for bakers willing to drop some dough (ha ha) on butter.
This cake uses 5 sticks of butter in the frosting alone, plus roughly 3 more for the cake and filling.
At a current rate of around 8 dollars per pound of butter here in New York City, that’s a lot to spend on a new recipe… which is why I used tried and true ones for the filling and frosting, and the new passionfruit cake recipe that I have been testing for the past 6 months (I’ve made it 4 times in 4 different shapes; it’s good, I promise).
You could easily 2/5 or 3/5 the recipe for the buttercream if you would rather frost it in a more standard manner.

Birthdays, previously:

26
25
24
23
22
21
20
18

Love to you all—thank you for reading and sticking around with me through these years!

Lambeth Passionfruit and Chocolate Cake
makes 1 3×6″ layer cake or 1 2×8″ layer cake

ingredients:
for the passionfruit butter cake:
225 grams (1 cup, 2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
400 grams (2 cups) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs at room temperature
2 large egg yolks at room temperature
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
2½ teaspoons baking powder
400 grams (2 2/3 cups) all-purpose flour
80 grams (1/3 cup) passion fruit purée, liquid (i.e. melted if frozen)
160 grams (2/3 cup) plain yogurt

for the brown sugar simple syrup:
75 grams (6 tablespoons loosely packed) brown sugar
75 grams water

for the chocolate fudge filling:
85 grams (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
185 grams (1 1/2 cups) powdered sugar
25 grams (1/4 cup) cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
45 grams (3 tablespoons) heavy cream
50 grams (2 ounces) dark chocolate, melted

for the Italian meringue buttercream:
5 large (140 grams ) egg whites
250 grams (1 and 1/4 cup) sugar
75 grams (5 tablespoons) water
1 teaspoon salt
565 grams (5 sticks, 2 1/2 cups) butter, cut into 1-inch pieces

directions:
Make the cake: grease and flour 3 6″ round cake pans.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Whip butter, salt, and sugar together until fluffy, pale,  and doubled in volume, approximately 6 minutes on medium high speed.
Add the eggs one at a time, whipping at least 1 minute after every addition.
Add in the egg yolks one at a time, whipping at least 30 seconds after every addition.
Add the vanilla and stir to combine.
Stir the flour and baking powder together and add on top of the mixture; stir a few times until approximately 1/2 combined.
Stir the yogurt and passionfruit purée together, then mix into the batter, stirring and scraping the botom of the bowl until abtter is completely homogeneous.
Spread into prepared pans.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a tester comes out with just a couple crumbs.
Allow to cool completely.
Make the simple syrup by boiling the sugar and water together until slightly thickened and sugar is dissolved, about 5 minutes on medium heat.
Allow syrup to cool completely.
Meanwhile, make the chocolate fudge filling: place all ingredients except the melted chocolate into a food processor.
Process for 30 seconds to 1 minute until the large butter lumps are broken up and the mixture is starting to smooth out.
Add in the melted chocolate and process by pulsing until completely smooth, about 2 minutes.
Torte the cakes.
Place the first layer on your cake stand and brush generously with the simple syrup, then layer on the chocolate filling.
Repeat with the second layer.
On the third layer, brush generously with syrup only.
Wrap the cake well in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to solidify filling.
Meanwhile, prepare the Italian meringue buttercream: place sugar, salt, and water into a pan over medium heat.
Begin to whip egg whites on high; once the sugar syrup comes to 240 degrees F, the egg whites should be at soft peaks.
Slowly stream the hot syrup into the whipping egg whites, being extremely careful to not splatter the syrup.
Whip on high speed until the meringue has cooled to close to room temperature (or fully room temp, if your butter is completely at room temp).
Add butter one piece at a time, whipping until fully combined.
Tint the frosting as desired with gel food coloring.
Crumb coat the cake and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or until crumb coat is completely hardened (this is especially important given the dark filling of the cake).
Frost as desired.