Who's Bringing the Cake?

The French have a whole relationship with cakes that I haven’t  completely adapted to.  I still can’t eat yellow pound cake  for breakfast even though here it’s considered normal.  Or that chocolate cake or yogurt/lemon cake is often eaten for snack after school.  (It tastes too much like birthday cake without the frosting!)

The biggest difference in cake consumption, however is the yearly events- birthdays, holidays ect…  In France there is really no such thing as a ‘sheet cake’.   You can’t go to the grocery store and find a big ass chocolate or yellow cake covered in flavored lard mixed with sugar. 

And nobody here would dare make a cake for any special event.  Why should they when they can just hop over to the nearest boulangerie and get themselves one of these?:

strawberry and cream double decker called a 'fraisier'

Or these:

strawberry pistachio 'fraisier pistache'

Or these:

a 'mille feuille'- very thin layers of cake, cream, slate sugar, and chocolate

French cake is probably the most perfect dessert I’ve ever tasted- often involving fruit and cream and cake so light and airy it doesn’t take up nearly as much belly space as the chunks of compound carbs we Americans like to chomp down (with a large glass of milk on the side- in my case).

That said, when my birthday rolls around, (Which is coming up soon- July 1^st!)- I make my husband get me an American type cake.  Even though they’re frozen and often involve Disney characters- They’ve got that double level chocolate cake and traditional frosting that I need in order to ‘feel’ like it’s my birthday:)  As you can imagine, my french relatives are less than impressed with my cake choice every year.

What’s your favorite kind of cake?  If you lived in France, would you be a stickler for sheet cake or would you bow to cultural cake consumption and head to your nearest boulangerie?