How To Celebrate a Birthday, or Second Breakfast #7
Hello! This is Meghan McCarron, and you're reading my newsletter, Second Breakfast. You can find me on Instagram, too. If you no longer want to receive this newsletter, you can unsubscribe here.
I write to you at the end of what I now think of as birthday season, or the month-long stretch between my birthday in January and my kid's birthday in February. It's our first time having this season, because he just had his first birthday. Imagine not knowing about birthdays, and then one day people gather and sing a song with your name in it that you've never heard before, and then give you cake.
Cake! What a moment. On the wholesome internet of ten years ago, the cheezeburger epic bacon internet, a reoccurring meme was a debate over cake vs. pie. I remember at the time wondering why this was such a thing, because I liked both. But I've had an epiphany: I am team cake. The decadent cakeisance of the last five years has delighted me in a way the rustic hipster pie shops of the 2010s never did. I was hyped for this season of cake.
I like to bake my own birthday cake, and this year my partner J. volunteered to help. Together we whipped up a vanilla sheet cake with chocolate sour cream frosting from the book One Tin Bakes. These recipes had been a hit in our household during the pandemic because you need only one kind of pan — a 9x13 — to make the recipes. Lately, I find myself avoiding anything I baked a lot back then. I was glad I re-opened this book anyway, because the cake was rich and unfussy and delicious.
For the baby's birthday, we debated whether to get a simple cake, because Felix would likely enjoy any cake, or getting a really fancy fun cake because it's always fun to get a fancy fun cake (I assume it's obvious which team I was on here). Fancy fun cake won out when I pointed out that this was the only year we would get to decide what kind of cake to get, since by next year the birthday boy would likely have opinions. So we got an olive oil, passionfruit, and bay leaf cake from Quarter Sheets, the first thing you think of for any one-year-old's birthday party. Let me tell you, he loved it.
His daycare also had a birthday celebration. They have a no cake rule. I was told that sometimes parents broke this no cake rule, but I'm an inveterate rule follower. I made the thing closest to cake that would be allowed: muffins.
Specifically, Genevieve Ko's recipe for blueberry lemon yogurt muffins. I have a dim memory of living... somewhere... maybe New York... near a cafe that made a big deal about their yogurt muffins. I craved them, even though the muffins tasted unremarkable. There was something enticing about the idea of a muffin made with yogurt.
This recipe fulfills the promise of yogurt muffins. They're tangy with a little bit of heft, but still airy from all the acids helping them puff up. For the birthday muffins, I went ahead and did the extra step of brushing them with a lemon simple syrup. So lemony! I really don't want to build my sense of self worth around how much Felix likes the food I make, I know this is the path of the devil, but I also need to say I never saw him shovel anything into his mouth faster than these muffins. Even cake.
JOURNALISM CORNER
I had two stories in Bon Appetit in January, both of which I really enjoyed working on:
A dive into the world of luxury magic mushroom chocolates, and why people are drawn to these products right now. If you've ever had idle group chat conversations about microdosing, you'd probably enjoy the piece!
A reported-out trend piece on how diners are changing their behavior now that dining out has gotten more expensive. Basically: everyone wants to spend their money at a sure bet, because disappointment is a luxury.
I also wrote about the history of tipping for NatGeo. Everyone who writes about food should have to research the history of tipping at some point, because I was really surprised by how often people have tried and failed to get rid of it in the US. Several states made it illegal in the 1920s, and walked it all back again!
READING CORNER
A package on Black tacos in LA
Whenever you wonder why a neighborhood is upscaling at lightning speed, the answer is usually a rich, eccentric investor
At a dinner a number of years ago, the writer Kim Stanley Robinson made an extremely convincing case for joining a club, but I still haven't joined one :(
Fascinated that divorce lawyers hype up the lesbian divorce rate
"Everyone thinks they have the truth. Everyone certainly has an opinion."
My favorite food video creator Imamu is back, and occasionally making videos about cooking at home in addition to her bentos. I love how she portrays her family life, and feel a parasocial wistfulness about her little girl looking so much older!
That's it for this edition! Thank you so much for reading. I really value having this newsletter as a place to write more casually about whatever I'm thinking about. If you've read this far, maybe you'll enjoy this extremely dumb video that's been making J. and I laugh for the past couple days.
—Meghan