Birthday cakes have always been a bit of a sore subject for me. Every year since I could remember I wanted Cookie Puss for my birthday. It took about 8 years or so but I finally got him and he was the most enjoyable puss I ever had. For some reason, I never got big birthday shindigs or elaborate specialty birthday cakes. I guess it wasn’t in the cards for me. Dionne Warwick told me that when I called her up as a kid. She said almost exactly that: “Jay you’ll never have a great big party or a personalized character cake for your birthday.” I used to ask my mother why I didn’t (“How come ma?”) and it seemed there was no reason. “How come ma?”
Birthdays, especially in March, (like mine) seem to just creep up on people and then disappear like they never happened. In like a lion, out like a lamb as they say. Even though that doesn’t really pertain to this scenario, it sounded good. So I never really had a kickass cake until cookie Puss and that only happened once. About a year later my mother pulled a few slick moves and got Batman put on my cake. My father and I have birthdays that fall within 2 days of each other so both of our names were on the cake. I didn’t mind that at all since I was reasonable. I’ll share the sugary icing of a spotlight with my dad as long as Bats is on my cake. That definitely surprised me because it showed that someone was finally listening! A small part of me really wanted some little Batman and Robin figurines running on the icing backdrop of Gotham City, bat-signal and all, but I would take what I could get at that point! More than 10 years later, my girlfriend at the time created an amazing Batman cake for my 20th birthday. Cutting it up and eating it was the hardest part. Who would want to cut up Batman? Besides, The Joker!
I think birthdays in general should be fun and different than any other day. If your own birthday isn’t somewhat different from the norm that would suck. I’m not the type to ask for people to make a fuss over me but it’s sure nice when they do it on their own! I know if I was a kid right now, I’d be begging to have Batman parties, Pirates of the Caribbean parties, Hulk parties etc. When I was a kid I had everything from Super Friends plates (pictured) to WWF napkins but ne’er a Hulkster cake.
I think Birthday cakes should be personalized, although I understand the painstaking work that goes into them. A couple of years ago I took a crack at it and made my girl a Marvin the Martian birthday cake. For a guy who’s the opposite of Julia Childs I think I did a pretty damn good job. For a look at another cool cake related post check out Geektarded who has a really cool look at a MOTU birthday he had when he was a kid. How many bat-cakes have you guys had? Did you have any other cool cakes we should know about?