How to pick a birthday cake flavour

Choosing a birthday cake flavour is rarely about what you like. It is about what a room of eight to twenty people, whose preferences you do not know, will all be reasonably happy with. That is a different problem, and it has a fairly reliable answer.

If you have no information at all: chocolate truffle

In years of baking, nobody has sent chocolate truffle back. It is the flavour with the highest floor — even people who do not particularly want cake will eat a slice of good dark chocolate ganache. Order it when you do not know the crowd, when the guest of honour has no stated preference, or when you are deciding at 10 pm the night before.

The one caveat: it is rich. People take smaller slices, so a 1kg chocolate truffle goes further than a 1kg pineapple.

If there are children: chocolate fudge or a photo cake

Children want chocolate and they want something to look at. A photo-print cake with the birthday child on it does more work than any flavour decision, and it is the picture that ends up on the family group. Keep the sponge simple — chocolate or vanilla — because the print is the event.

If the crowd is older: butterscotch or pineapple

Butterscotch praline is the flavour that disappears fastest at family functions with grandparents in the room. It is sweet without being heavy, has a crunch that people remember from bakeries of a certain era, and it is not intimidating. Pineapple does the same job at a lower price and with more nostalgia attached.

If someone 'doesn't really like cake': fresh fruit and cream

Nine times out of ten, what that person means is they do not like intensely sweet frosting. A strawberry or mango cream cake — sponge, macerated fruit, cream whipped only to soft peak — is the least sweet thing on most menus, and it converts sceptics reliably. Order it in fruit season and skip it out of season, because the whole cake rests on the fruit being good.

If it's an anniversary or something with a bit of occasion: red velvet

Red velvet photographs better than anything else on the table, and proper buttermilk red velvet with real cream cheese frosting has a tang that keeps it from feeling heavy after dinner. It is the most-ordered anniversary flavour we make, usually with a piped message and crumb around the base.

The half-and-half escape hatch

When two people genuinely cannot agree — and this happens more than you would think — a cake can be split down the middle, half of one flavour and half of another. We do it in the bento size regularly and in full cakes with a day's notice. It resolves an argument for about seventy rupees, which is good value.

A short ranking, if you want one

• 1. Chocolate truffle — highest floor, safest choice, works for any age
• 2. Butterscotch praline — best at mixed-age family gatherings
• 3. Red velvet — best for occasions and photographs
• 4. Fresh fruit and cream — best for people who dislike sweet
• 5. Chocolate fudge — best for a room full of children
• 6. Pineapple — best value, and nostalgic in a way that still counts