Anything you want

Classic yellow cake, whipped chocolate ganache filling, browned butter frosting, then encased with smashed Oreos and Heath bars, finished with a drizzle of salted caramel sauce. YUM.

We all know that adage “careful what you wish for” for good reason–sometimes it can be more than we bargained for! And frankly, I suppose it’s actually a good thing that we don’t always get what we want. We’d be so spoiled and entitled, fat on the luxury of a perpetual “yes”. We would be complete strangers to the surprise of grace, the delight of learning that you will in fact get something you thought you would not. We would be shallow from never having to work toward something, to be patient, to learn how to cope with disappointment. Easy things to undervalue in this well-intentioned world where everyone gets a trophy.

But one time we should be able to have anything we want, exactly what we want, is on our birthday, right? That is so not the time to modify our expectations. So when Rita asked me for a special cake for her son’s birthday, I was delighted to make exactly what he was wanting!

Browned butter frosting, layered with smashed Oreos and Heath bars, then drizzled with Salted Caramel Sauce.

Rita gave me a very specific request for what I think of as a Confectionary cake. We’d go camping every year when I was a kid and at the end of a long trip through California’s super-heated central valley, we’d stop in the town of Eureka at a store called The Confectionary before our trek up the mountain to the camp spot. It smelled of freshly made waffle cones, had a broad range of ice cream choices (including my favorite: bubblegum), and a truly mind-blowing number of jars and cases filled with every kind of candy I’d ever heard of and at least triple again candy that I had never seen before. It was heaven.

So this cake, while it doesn’t include every kind of candy I’ve heard of, it sort of reminds me of The Confectionary because it’s so many good things in one place. A lovely, soft but toothsome yellow cake, a whipped chocolate ganache frosting that is generously thick but not too heavy, browned butter frosting (a personal favorite of mine), and then a hug of smashed Oreos and Heath bars, drizzled with Salted Caramel sauce.

Salted Caramel sauce is drizzled over the browned butter frosting on this yellow cake with chocolate filling.

Because while it’s good for us to not get what we want all the time, it’s delicious to get exactly what we want on our birthdays!