The Best Thing I Ate Last Week

Start with fresh, cold, glass-bottled cream from a local dairy—thick and so clotted under the cap you have to break the buttery seal with the back of a spoon before you can pour it out—sweetened with sugar and vanilla, and beaten to stiff pillowy peaks. Add fresh strawberries from Harry’s Berries in California, which are easily the best berries in America bar none. They’re so full of explosive berry flavor that you can’t understand how all of the other strawberries you’ve been eating can even think of calling themselves a strawberry. All crowning a homemade angel food cake, baked by a real honest-to-goodness Minnesota grandmother… from scratch. Even better when it’s your mother-in-law and she combines these three elements into your favorite birthday cake. Yup, I ate half of it, not gonna lie. Turning 55 isn’t so bad after all.