I like to bake. I like baking cakes even more than eating them. I like eating pie better, but baking a pie is never as satisfying as cake. I don’t know why that is.

Let month, I was asked to make a cake for my youngest grandchild, an honor. Today we are celebrating our only grandson’s birthday, and orange is his favorite color. So far.

Orange was my dad’s favorite color too. There are Campbells in my family coming down from my dad. When I was little, I tried to pinch my dad for not wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day, and he pointed to a smudge of orange from painting boats for the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, and he said that counted for him as a Scot.

Whatever. My grandson is a busy little person, so his preferences are bound to be original. He likes the color orange just now even it is statistically more often a least favorite color as well as the color most likely to be hated.

But I ask you: Would you mind getting a four-layer gingercake with orange buttercream for your birthday, even if it was orange? Even if you’d moved on from orange to red?

The cake is dark as chocolate, but instead is flavored with gingerbread spices and a full cup of organic blackstrap molasses. I cooked down the juice of four oranges to color and flavor the buttercream. The orange candy slices came from Bruce’s in Cannon Beach just this morning. You can’t see it, but the sides of the cake have a sprinkling of naturally colored orange sugar sprinkles. I’ve saved the tall, striped candles for almost a year.

Happy birthday, Logan!