A recent birthday cake in our house.

One candle because no one could be bothered to come up with some other combination. “It’s for your first half-century,” I told Yuriko.

It’s called a Queen Elizabeth Cake, a creation of the always-talented Deerfield Bakery here in the northwest suburbs. The bakery’s web site tells me that it’s “yellow cake filled with strawberries, Bavarian cream and sliced bananas.” That jibes with my experience of eating some of it.

Also, “a single strawberry crowns this dessert, created by Henry Schmitt in honor of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Chicago in 1959.” That would be part of the Queen’s tour along the spanking-new St. Lawrence Seaway that year. (A bit of major infrastructure that should be better known; I’d bet that only a small number of kids in Lilly’s dorm, just to pick one sample of people that age, know what it is.)

Henry Schmitt, coming from a line of bakers from Germany, founded Deerfield Bakery in metro Chicago in the 20th century. Apparently his QE Cake was an idiosyncratic take, since elsewhere (such as allreipes.com), I’ve read that the term refers to “a date nut cake… crowned with a broiled coconut topping.”

That sounds good too, but it isn’t anything like the Deerfield Bakery creation.

Which is very, very good.