There is no denying that we get so wrapped up in Christmas traditions and activities that we overlook the true meaning of Dec. 25 as the celebration of Christ’s birth.
But over in Archbold, Ohio, a loving grandmother, who is a religious educator and an excellent baker, came up with a solution several years ago.
Carol Breidenbach, with the support of her husband, Lenny, bakes 20 coffee cakes that are designated as Baby Jesus Birthday Cakes. It’s a beautiful Christmas tradition that includes birthday candles and the birthday song for Baby Jesus.
It began several years ago when the four Breidenbach children were small and Carol read in the Christian Mother’s newsletter that families should start their own tradition during the Christmas chaos.
She admits that she wondered how she could fit it in because the young family had so many places to go on Christmas. But she and Lenny decided that a family brunch after the gifts were opened was doable.
Or, as she recalled, “before we had to take off for the two grandmas’ houses.”
1 cup butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1½ tablespoons vanilla
1¾ cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
Powdered sugar
Cream butter, sugar, and eggs. Add and mix well sour cream, vanilla, flour, baking powder, and salt being sure to incorporate flour thoroughly.
Pour half the batter into a greased and floured bundt pan.
Sprinkle filling mixture (below) over top. Pour remaining batter over filling being sure it is smooth and even.
Bake in preheated 350-degree oven 1 hour. Cool completely in pan before turning out and sprinkling with powdered sugar.
The filling: Mix 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ⅓ cup brown sugar, and 1 cup finely chopped nuts.
The cake will keep several weeks if wrapped in foil.
“We set the table the night before with good china,” she said. The menu was fruit, toast, and scrambled eggs at first.
“Looking for other ways for our family to add Christ into Christmas, I came up with the idea of a Baby Jesus Birthday Cake complete with candles,” Carol said.
But an ordinary, overly sweet birthday cake with thick frosting wouldn’t be appropriate in the morning, but a coffee cake would. Using the Sour Cream Coffee Cake recipe her neighbor Lois Weller had given her, Carol added it to the brunch menu, along with birthday candles. The family put the frosting on the tradition, to turn a phrase, by singing “Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus.”
The tradition of singing before the cake is cut will continue Christmas morning at the Breidenbach home in Archbold as it usually does in the homes of their grown children.
Carol contends that baking the coffee cakes as give-aways is much easier than when she cut and decorated cookies into Nativity figures as her first way to bake Christ in Christmas.
The cakes are rich and moist with sour cream and a cinnamon-nut filling. She has cut back on the nuts because of the increasing number of allergic people. The wrapped cakes keep well for three weeks.
A birthday candle is attached to each cake and a card is added that reads: “We share with you our family traditional Baby Jesus Birthday Cake. The cake is in the shape of a circle, the symbol of eternal life because this is the gift that Jesus gave us.
“The candle reminds us that Jesus is the light of the world and of our lives.”
The Breidenbachs have a new stove with a double oven, and Carol has garnered enough bundt pans to make the baking job faster, but she can’t get too early a start on the project.
Each year, she and Lenny spend two weeks in early December in New Hampshire and they wouldn’t have it any other way.
They spend the time in North Conroy, N.H., caring for their grandchildren, while their son-in-law and daughter, Robert and Angel Zakon, attend an annual conference. This year, the couple traveled to Puerto Rico on business while the Grandpa and Grandma Breidenbach “had a great time” with the grandchildren.
The other Breidenbach children are Lisa Breidenbach of Charlotte and Chip Breidenbach of Maumee. Carol and Lenny’s 6-year-old son Jerome was killed while crossing the road. Jerome was deaf in his left ear.
When Carol made one of the coffee cakes in New Hampshire her grandson was surprised and remarked, “I thought you only make those at Christmas.”
Carol’s bundt pans have increased to 20, thanks to good finds at garage sales where they are only 50 cents and $1 and “are just like new.”
Some of her pans date back to the introduction of cake mixes when Pillsbury used the pans as a promotion to encourage mix sales. The average home baker may think a bundt pan will last forever, but Carol says that’s not true.
“Through the years, I have worn out quite a few pans due to the nonstick coating. She warns against using generic baking spray brands. Her cake was a disaster sticking to the pan when she used an off brand.
Her longtime baking standbys are two mixing bowls that are large enough to mix two cakes in each.
The double oven has stepped up production tremendously, Carol says, but if she runs out of an ingredient, such as sour cream, Lenny is always right there to run to the store.
He also is credited for wrapping the cakes and for shipping those that go out of state.
“I think he really enjoys it,” Carol says. Lenny is a retired auto engineer.
They returned to Archbold on Dec. 12, and grocery shopping, mixing, baking, decorating, wrapping, delivering, and shipping were under way.
No, you cannot buy a Happy Birthday Jesus Cake from Carol and Lenny. But you can make one following this recipe and add your own candles and song.
Mary Alice Powell is a retired Blade food editor. Contact her at: poseypowell@aol.com.
First Published December 22, 2018, 10:11 p.m.
