Let them eat cake

I have a birthday confession to make.
As a child, I suffered from an intense case of cake envy.
I was especially envious of my friend Michelle's birthday cake, which encased the most delicious surprise: Coins dotted the insides of the cake like shiny circles of confetti!
I thought this was the most genius of cake inventions but my mother, baker of the birthday cakes, had probably done the math and realized nine children's birthday cakes could end up literally costing a pretty penny if she yielded to my request for a money cake of my own.
We settled on variations of chocolate cake, a rarity in our household, which made me a very happy birthday girl.
For a few years I successfully convinced my mother to give up baking and to buy the Pepperidge Farm layered chocolate cake for my birthday -- a sickly sweet frozen cake that came in a cardboard box. It's a decision that confounds me in retrospect but struck me as perfectly delectable at age 12.
In my teenage years I took over the cake baking in the house, often turning to a purchased mix called Snackin' Cake because of its economy of scale. You could feed dessert to 12 people for 99 cents a box.
Snackin' Cake was easy for a junior cook: Just add water and vinegar, mix, and bake for 25 minutes.
It wasn't the most gourmet of efforts but the Snackin' Cake pan was always emptied in a hurry in our household.
As an adult I have experimented with all kinds of cake recipes, having long left behind the frozen food aisle and Betty Crocker offerings.
On my own birthday, I now prefer a platter of gourmet cheeses over cake, but when I do make cake, it's usually this keeper -- Chocolate Cloud Cake. It's a Nigella Lawson recipe but it's become synonymous with my friend Sarah, who introduced a variation of it to me years ago. Sarah's version includes lavender in the whip cream topping and is decorated with edible flowers.
It's a flourless cake (perfect when you have guests with gluten issues) filled with rich, dense dark chocolate. An adult cake that stands in mature contrast to the Pepperidge Farm days of my youth.
Best of all, it doesn't come in a box. And, if you're really inspired, I'm sure it would accommodate the addition of coins quite nicely.