If you’re gonna have birthday cake, go for broke

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When the American Cancer Society created a beautiful cake with nifty ingredients that it proclaimed was ‘better for you,’ various L.A. Times staffers were intrigued. Cake is good. Nutrition is good. Not having to brave the buses in front of the building by going outside for nourishment is good ...

So the Food section folks went to the trouble of collecting and preparing the ingredients for the New Red Velvet Cake. They measured quinoa flour. They roasted and pureed beets. They carefully added proper quantities of dried cherries and natural applesauce. They even produced a raspberry puree. Then they baked the cake. And iced the cake. And served the cake.

The Health section folks went to the trouble of eating the cake. Work, work, work.

And we liked it. Just as we like the folks over at the American Cancer Society. (Kudos, guys, for the effort!)

But Health colleague Rosie Mestel took issue -- just a bit, actually -- with the fact that the cake isn’t exactly a health food. Her initial review. Her followup. (Do not even think of suggesting to this woman that fruits and vegetables don’t contain sucrose.)

And test kitchen director Noelle Carter thought the creation was more trouble than it was worth. Coming from a person who has made her own tofu, this was saying something.

Now, as chance may have it, my household was due to celebrate a milestone birthday. Obviously, an elaborate, labor-intensive dessert was required. And, obviously, if an elaborate, labor-intensive dessert was required, then any nutritional advantages, or fewer nutritional disadvantages, could only be for the good.

Because I, myself, am a label-reading, ingredient-parsing, calorie-crunching, nutrition-obsessed zealot. I’m quite insufferable actually. That’s not to say I don’t have my weaknesses, but I’ve had to restrain myself from doing interventions at mall food courts. Sometimes I have not shown such restraint when passing the office vending machines. (Of course, the security guards here are safely within earshot.)

Thus was a ‘better-for-you’ cake proposal made to the birthday celebrant.

And thus did we end up with an exercise-your-pancreas’-insulin-producing-powers-just-by-looking-at-it Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Peanut Butter Frosting and Chocolate Peanut Butter Glaze.

At my house, the birthday girl gets to choose. (Me, I’d have gone for the New Red Velvet Cake. Honest.)

-- Tami Dennis