Triple Lemon Chiffon Cake, bishes! Via howtoeatacupcake.net @ Flickr.

As the dog days of August wind down, I realize I’m oversubscribed for birthday parties! I have two this weekend, followed by next weekend’s spectacular celebration of MamaSharper’s birthday at an undisclosed foreign location complete with four star restaurant and Aveda spa.

I’m a big fan of birthdays for many reasons. I believe that we should be thankful for each one we get–after all, we all know plenty of people who should have had more birthdays, but didn’t. But besides that, there’s birthday cake. I am always, always, looking for an excuse to eat cake. You see, my childhood home was an anti-junk food stronghold. No soda, no cookies, no sugary cereals, no nothing. The lure of sugary delights was so strong that at friends’ birthday parties, I would practically plunge face-down into the cake as soon as the candles were out. This unfortunately led to massive sugar highs and post-party sugar crashes, which MamaSharper describes as “you bouncing off the walls until you got irritable and started crying and I had to put you in your room.”

These days I love cake in a more moderate fashion, but I can tell you that the E-vite for my friend Anna’s party tomorrow night was received with more than the usual enthusiasm when I saw she’d written “there will be chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing from Sugar Sweet Sunshine.“ Sugar Sweet is my second favorite bakery in New York, after the all-time champion, Amy’s Bread.

In addition to the the cinnamon crispy pastries that send me and sarah.of.a.lesser.god into swoons of delight, Amy’s makes the best layer cakes ever, including Monkey Cake (banana and pineapple with cream cheese icing), Lucious Lemon Mousseline (with a deliciously tart schmear of curd between the cake layers) and Apple Walnut (with maple buttercream frosting). They are all perfectly moist, tender and delicious, unlike the overrated, dried-out, too-sweet (but SATC-approved) cupcakes from Magnolia (and don’t get me started on wedding cake, which is nearly always dried out, over-decorated and tasteless–at 100 times the price).

Now I realize not everyone is into cake. MamaSharper, for instance, is all about home-baked cookies. DaddySharper is fond of pie, particularly post-Thanksgiving, when leftover pie is our breakfast of choice. But for me, there is no better food–anytime–than cake.

Are you the girl with the most cake? Tell us about your favorite cake-y memories in the comments…