Help - what birthday cake size?

[alwaysontop]

Anyone help me on this... I want to make a round chocolate cake for my son's first birthday.
I think it needs to feed a small slice to 6 children (not counting babies!) and up to 16 adults.
My neighbour has lent me a deep 8 inch tin but I'm not sure that's big enough and am wondering whether to buy a 10 inch deep tin. I'd rather go bigger than smaller as no problems finishing off cake (wink)
I've also never baked in a deep tin - how do you make sure it's done yet not burnt on outside?

An 8" tin, which is 3" deep will give approx. 20 2" x1" servings, so your 8" tin should be plenty. I don't use Victoria sandwich recipe in my 8" tins, but if you want to use Victoria sandwich I would personally bake in two halves and use 3 eggs and 6oz each of butter, sugar and flour in each half. That will give two halves of approx. 1 1/2" deep in an 8" round tin, then you can level the top of each half when it is cooled, unless you don't need it flat/aren't decorating it.

Hope that helps?

That is brilliant midori - I hadn't thought of baking separately! I think I have lost some brain cells in this mum lark!
Do you cut it in a grid rather than slices?
Have you ever tried a chocolate ganache type icing?

Haha!

Yes, cutting in a grid will make it easier to yield more slices and they shouldn't crumble.

For ganache I pour 600ml of double cream brought to the boil onto 1kg of chopped chocolate and stir until melted. Leave to cool until a thick spreading consistency. That makes rather a lot though, half would be enough to fill and coat an 8" sponge I think.

We had a similar number of adults/children at my DD's 2nd birthday and I baked a cake in a 10 inch (24 cm) tin, using 5 medium eggs and the same weights of SR flour, butter and sugar to a basic Victoria sponge recipe.

The cake was about 2.5 inches deep IIRC. I baked it at 160C (lower than I would use for a usual Victoria sponge) for 1 hour 5 mins and it came out really well. I then split the cake in half to fill and ice it.

We had a good third of the cake left over, so I think an 8 inch tin would be fine for the same number of people.

Thanks so much both of you - that is brilliant!