Complete Novice. Basic fail safe recipe pls.

[chubbymomie2012]

hey Girls, i am a complete novice at baking after 20 years as a full time nurse i have just taken a career break to rear my kiddies. i wanted to ask does anyone have a fail safe recipe for a cake. (basic sponge pls.) im going to make my sons first birthday cake. also need a recipe for butter icing for the top please. thanks in advance.

Weigh your eggs. Then use the same each of self raising flour, caster sugar and butter. How big do you want the cake to be? Two eggs will make an 8 inch cake.

Beat the butter and sugar together until it looks creamy. Add the flour, beat again and add the beaten eggs. Mix until a dropping consistency (so if you take a spoonful and tilt it back over the bowl it will slowly drop off.) If too stiff, you can add a tbsp of milk and beat that in.

Grease and line a cake tin (lining really does help) and preheat your oven to 180 (no fan) or 160 (fan). Put the cake in the oven for 20 - 25 mins until golden brown on top and starting to shrink away slightly from the sides. Remove from the tin and allow to cool on a wire rack. Then decorate!

For the buttercream I am still looking for a recipe that doesn't make me feel ill! Hopefully someone else can help!

Probably best to practice first. You could always do a small one with one egg and then you can see what your oven is like etc.

The recipe I use for buttercream is just double the icing sugar to butter.

So for 200g butter use 400g icing sugar.

Always use room temp butter. Cream it, ie mix it so its quite soft and not still in lumps. Then start adding the sugar. I usually do three additions, mixing until incorporated before adding the next.

If you need to loosen it add a little milk at a time, probably 1 tbsp. Any more and you could go too far.

At the end add in 1 tsp of vanilla essence!

thank you very much Mrs villiers and wannabe. im going to make one tomo for a trial. xx

Good luck! And I forgot to say make sure your butter is at room temp and chopped into cubes if you're hand mixing.

I too hadn't baked a cake in years ... until yesterday! I used this Mary Berry recipe and it worked an absolute treat.

Oh, by the way, I should have said that DS demanded a chocolate cake. I therefore took out 4tbsp of flour and replaced them with 4tbsp of cocoa powder, and sandwiched it together with buttercream (same recipe as wanna).

(Can't believe I've just posted in Cakes & Bakes - who'd have thought?! )