What would you wait in line for?

Nom nom. Halloween just passed, and for the first time I felt too old to dress up and knock on people’s doors for candy. It’s sad, really; next year I’ll be an adult and then I’ll definitely be too old. But anyway, the real reason I’m writing about this is my sweet tooth. I really like sugar, probably too much for my own good. Incidentally, my birthday is the day after Halloween, so every year an ungodly slush of cake and candy puts me out for a good week. Candy’s okay. Scratch that, candy’s pretty good. I’d say it’s like a reliable old friend when I need some of that rush. More recently though, I’ve been expanding my tastes and dipping my toes into the cake world, and it blows candy out of the water. I’m never looking back.

My first taste of cake must’ve been on a birthday, too. My mom’s birthday is in May, so I would’ve been about six months old. I wish I could say I remember it, the taste of the cake’s juicy flesh and the frosting smeared across my face, but I guess it just wasn’t good enough. At this point, it would still be a long time before my palette developed and I was able to appreciate true culinary excellence.

I still remember that day in preschool when my friend brought in a plastic tray of store-bought cupcakes for his birthday. The bright yellow mix, the oversized bleach-white buttercream swirl, the sickeningly colorful rainbow vomit of sprinkles. Truly the lowest of the low, but to preschool me it was nothing short of heaven. There’s something about that over-the-top in-your-face kind of sweetness that comes with this type of stuff. You try to balance out copious amounts of frosting by getting a good chunk of cake to go with it, but it still ends up hogging the center stage and overpowering everything else. There’s no nuance, only a singular dimension of pasty cream. You know it’s bad. But it’s also goood. You know it is.

But I think there’s also a downside to the classic cake and its bond with birthdays; a lot of them just look and taste the same. Like the store bought cupcakes from before, there’s a standard for what a birthday cake should be, and I feel like that takes away some of the excitement. Going in, you know exactly what to expect, and it’s something you’ve tasted countless times before. There’s a reason “birthday cake” is a flavor of Pop-Tarts. But there’s also a whole world outside of the cookie-cutter mold, a world I wish I’d stumbled upon far earlier…

A few months back I went with some friends to Za’s on Green Street. The first thing that caught my eye was an impressive display of cakes at the counter. It’d been a while since anyone’s birthday, so my cake sensors immediately drew my attention to the assortment of sweets behind the glass. If there’s one thing they’ve mastered, it’s making their flavors sound really good. Or I’m just an impulsive buyer. Either way, I caved in, took the bait, bought a sizable slice of chocolate truffle cake, and watched in amazement as the world widened before my eyes. This was cake! In that moment, I made a solemn vow to return every week and try every flavor they had. And now, three months later, I’m still working towards fulfilling that promise to myself. Are there too many flavors? Not really. Did I get bored? No shot. I’m just stuck on my fifth slice of Oreo mousse cake. God, that one is good. Would I wait in line for a taste of Za’s cake? Yes. A thousand times yes.