The question comes in a few forms. Can you do a birthday cake. Can you write on it. Can it be here by Saturday. The answers are yes, yes but not where you are picturing, and only if you order by Thursday.
There are two whole cakes on the menu, the Fraisier and the gluten-free orange and pistachio, and they are different enough that the choice usually makes itself once you know what each one is. So this is what each one is.
The Fraisier
A fraisier is a strawberry cake, and the word comes from fraise, the French for strawberry. It has nothing to do with a frosted layer cake. Layers of vanilla génoise with crème mousseline between them, and a wall of halved strawberries standing on their cut side all the way around, so the fruit shows through the sides when you look at it. The top is whole strawberries and raspberries, dusted with sugar.
Mousseline is the thing to understand. It’s pastry cream with butter beaten into it, which makes it rich and firm enough to hold the strawberries upright, and it is why the cake needs to come out of the refrigerator a while before cutting. Cold, it is stiff. At cool room temperature it is silk.
It is also a cake most people in Texas have never been served, which is most of its argument as a present. It eats lighter than it looks and it is less sweet than it looks.
The gluten-free orange and pistachio
Made without gluten, which is the whole point of it, and not as a substitution exercise. Orange zest and pistachio, baked as a single round, glazed, and finished edge to edge with slivered nuts across the top.
It is on the menu because the question kept arriving before the cake existed. Somebody at the table cannot eat wheat, and the choice until now was a cake nobody could share or two desserts and an awkward moment. This is one cake that goes to the middle of the table.
It is also the more patient of the two. A cake built on sponge and nuts is far less bothered by a warm room than one built on mousseline, so if the cake has to sit out while people finish eating, this is the one that will still look like itself an hour later.
Getting a name on it
Neither cake takes writing across the top. One is fruit and the other is nuts, and icing script on either would be a decoration fighting the cake.
The name goes on the doily instead, lettered on the paper the cake sits on. The cake stays the cake, the message is still there in the photograph, and nobody has to look at piped handwriting. Tell me the wording when you order.
Which one for which birthday
For an adult who would rather have fruit than chocolate, the Fraisier. For a dinner where the cake comes out at the end of a long meal, the Fraisier again: it is the lighter finish.
For a table where someone cannot eat gluten, the orange and pistachio, and not only for that person. It is a good cake on its own terms, which is the difference between including someone and accommodating them.
For a party where the cake sits out for an hour before it is cut, the orange and pistachio, because the Fraisier’s mousseline wants to stay cool. I wrote about what heat does to a cake at outdoor events, and the same applies to a crowded kitchen with the oven going.
How many it serves
The Fraisier is seven inches across and serves eight to ten. That is a real eight to ten, with slices you would be happy to be handed, not the sixteen a serving chart would claim. If you need the exact size of the gluten-free cake for a particular headcount, ask when you order and I will tell you what it cuts.
For a bigger table, order two rather than asking for one larger cake, and consider making them different. The two side by side cover the fruit people and the gluten-free guest at once, and it gives the birthday person a choice, which is never a bad thing on their day. For a much larger event, the whole cake stops being the right format and the private calendar is the conversation to have.
The 48 hours
Whole cakes need 48 hours at minimum. A cake is not a box of madeleines. The sponge is baked, cooled, and rested; the cream is made and beaten; the cake is assembled and set cold before it is finished. None of that compresses.
The cart will let you pick tomorrow as the delivery day for a cake, because it lets you pick tomorrow for anything. I will write back and move the date. Save us both the email and choose a day at least two days out. For a Saturday party, that means the order is placed by Thursday. For a Sunday, by Friday, and Sunday delivery runs only until two in the afternoon, so the cake arrives by early afternoon and waits in the refrigerator until it is time.
The delivery is to a person, at the address you gave, in the window you chose. Someone has to be there, and the cake goes straight into the refrigerator. An hour before cutting, it comes out. How ordering works covers the rest.
Allergies at a birthday table
The Fraisier contains wheat, dairy, and eggs. The orange and pistachio cake is made without gluten and contains tree nuts, which is worth saying plainly rather than burying, because a cake that solves one guest’s problem can create another’s.
The larger point is the kitchen itself. It works with wheat and with tree nuts every day, so no cake that comes out of it can be promised as an allergen-free environment, gluten-free recipe or not. If someone at your table has a serious allergy or celiac disease, say so before you order and I will tell you plainly what the risk is rather than guess on your behalf. There is more on where that line sits in the piece on macarons and gluten.
Ordering it
Pick the cake on the menu, choose a delivery day at least two days out, and check out. If you want a name on the doily, send a note with the wording right after you order, or reply to your confirmation email; either reaches me. If you are not sure which cake suits the person, tell me who it is for and how many are coming, and I will tell you which one I would bring.