This spectacular collection of birthday cakes features a quirky range of recipes and stories from bakers such as Alice Medrich, James Beard, Julia Child, and Maida Heatter. Julia Child's contribution, Le Kilimanjaro, is a cone-shaped ice cream cake that features a fire gently burning in the shell of half an egg placed a top. There's even the recipe for Vert-vert (Green Cake) which was baked every year at Giverny for Claude Monet by his cook, Marguerite.
It's out-of-print (seems to be my forté), but available online for just a few cents.