Yesterday was my son Shaun’s birthday. For the past few years he has asked me to bake ginger rolls instead of a birthday cake. This is a two-day process that involves making the light buttery brioche dough I learned in Paris, then giving the dough a cool rise overnight in the refrigerator.

I also chop a huge amount of fresh ginger to simmer and then I turn that into a filling of candied ginger and syrup.

The next day I roll the dough into long snakes filled with the candied ginger, tie them into knots, and drop each one into a muffin cup partially filled with ginger syrup.

When that rises to a marshmallowy lightness, I spoon on more syrup and bake. When the baked rolls come out of the oven, I brush on more syrup.

Yeah. It’s easy to see why Shaun hides all 6 pans of these at the back of the freezer and only shares them with Saraphina (who also chooses them over cake on her birthday).

But yesterday on the way home from school, Saraphina had an idea. “We could stack the rolls and make them into a cake,” she said. Brilliant idea. I knew exactly how to do it because when we had our bakery I made cinnamon roll monkey bread.

So we stacked them in a bundt pan with additional syrup between the layers.

Here is the result.

Saraphina did the decorating. Then we had a surprise for her—a new litter of Starlight Mice on one of the pans! These are ginger mice, a breed we haven’t seen before.

They crowded onto the plate for the candle lighting and joined in the celebration. No doubt there will be more soon. That’s just the way it is with these little guys.