Photos, Recipes and Styling by Béatrice Peltre

In our house, more often than not, a birthday cake is going to be homemade. Not because we don’t enjoy a cake coming straight out of a special pastry shop—and we actually have a favorite chocolate mousse cake we always turn to in case there’s not enough time to prepare one ourselves—but because I find that a homestyle birthday cake has more meaning and intention. Somehow, it purely says: “Look, this cake is for you; I made it just thinking about you!”

It is especially clear these days that simple home cooking makes even more sense than ever, utilizing ingredients that we have handy. Our birthday cakes will be flavored and decorated with seasonal fruit and edible flowers and herbs from the garden or a nearby farm; we love to support our farmers, too. At home, we’d rather have a rustic style than a cake that is too elaborate and complicated.

Here I suggest three easy recipes that all use gluten-free flours because that’s how I eat and bake, but rest assured that they can be prepared with wheat flour too. All three cake bases are simple to make. I use butter but they can easily be made with dairy-free ingredients too, if you need to (or choose to) avoid dairy. When it comes to decorating your cake, don’t stress if you haven’t done it before. A cake can be simple and beautiful at the same time.

If you don’t have a piping bag, use a zip-top bag and cut a tiny opening in one corner to pipe the frosting onto the cake. The chocolate cake is prepared with a six-inch cake pan because I find that a smaller, taller, multilayered cake looks prettier—and I happen to have these smaller cake pans at home—but if you don’t have that size, a seven-inch cake pan works well too. You may then need to cook it for five minutes less. Always check. If you happen to only have one pan, bake one cake at a time so that the two cakes are exactly the same width before the layers are stacked. In short, adapt with what you have.

I imagined these three birthday cakes to tell the story of a simple version of summer—very similar to the slow summers I spent as a child back home in France. Made and presented with love, they should make the birthday honoree feel special. We all need more of this feeling these days, don’t you agree?

This story appeared in the Summer 2020 issue.