52 Recipe Challenge - Week 43.

The other week I was tasked with sorting out a birthday cake for my Mum's birthday party and I wasn't sure whether to bake one or buy one.  I asked around and the common consensus seemed to be to make one, then I remembered that there were 40 people expected at the party and it would have to be a large cake when I only had small sandwich tins... so I ummed and aahhed a little longer and then came up with a plan.

The plan was simple try to make a cake and if it failed buy one! So I went out and tried to buy a big cake tin and then decided a new roasting tin would do the trick. I also stocked up on a cake board, box, sprinkles, icing writing; all the essentials! (Or so I thought...)

Initially I tried making my normal fail safe Victoria sponge recipe from my tried and tested Sam Stern book but it didn't make enough mixture to make a decent sized sponge.  So I consulted my stash of cookbooks and dug out Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery and turned to their Vanilla Layer Cake.  None of the cakes in my books were exactly like the one I planned to make but the description did say "we use this as the basis of many a birthday cake, not least because  it can be iced and decorated to any effect."

Perfect! The introduction to the layer cake chapter also provided some handy advice "double the recipe to make.. cakes that can serve 20 - 25 people easily."

This recipe is how I made this lovely cake for my Mum's 50th birthday party.

To make this cake you will need:

550g Butter
550g Caster Sugar
500g Self Raising Flour
2 Teaspoons of Baking Powder
8 Eggs
2 Teaspoons of Vanilla Flavouring/ Extract
6 Tablespoons Milk


Initially I tried making my normal fail safe Victoria sponge recipe from my tried and tested Sam Stern book but it didn't make enough mixture to make a decent sized sponge in my roasting tin.  So I consulted my stash of cookbooks and dug out Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery and turned to their Vanilla Layer Cake.  None of the cakes in my books were exactly like the one I planned to make but the description did say "we use this as the basis of many a birthday cake, not least because  it can be iced and decorated to any effect."

Perfect! The introduction to the layer cake chapter also provided some handy advice "double the recipe to make.. cakes that can serve 20 - 25 people easily."

As I already had the oven on from my previous attempt at cooking I didn't start by pre-heating it, I  lined the roasting tin again and then weighed all of the ingredients and then put them all the into the food processor.

Next I blitzed them all together, pausing every few minutes to scrape the sides down with my spatula and ensuring everything got mixed together.

Then I started to worry as the mixture started to leak! I was still blitzing the mixture together with the food processor when some of the cake batter started to seep out from underneath...

As I'd already come this far I carried on mixing until all the ingredients were properly combined.

Then I lifted the mixing bowl from the food processor unit and saw the extent of the leakage!

So I poured the cake batter mixture into the lined roasting tin until it was about two thirds full and put it into the oven.  I turned the oven down to 180c/ gas mark 4.

Then I had to set about cleaning up the mess... it was everywhere! Even on my washing machine!

The original recipe which is for half the ingredients said to bake the cake in the oven for 25 minutes but after this amount of time my doubled recipe still wasn't done.  So I kept checking on it and it finished baking after 50 minutes.

When I took it out of the oven the cake had risen over the top of the roasting tray, which was a better result than my last effort!  I knew this wouldn't be easy to ice though, so I let it cool a little in the roasting tray before turning it out on to a wire rack to cool and using the flatter bottom as the top instead!

Once all this was done it was about midnight so I put the cooled cake in some clingfilm in a cake box ready for decorating the next morning.

The next day I did my chauffeur duties, picked up some ready roll icing & squirty white icing, then after picking up a back up cake, I finally iced my cake.

I won't go into this in detail needless to say squirty icing and cake ribbons hide a multitude of sins! That and Ready roll icing isn't as handy as I would have hoped... best not get icing for a round cake when yours is a rectangle!

 In the end it went better than I had expected and the birthday girl seemed to like it!  As a family serious we're serious about cake and she ended up with five cakes over her birthday, good going I say!