Stupidly easy birthday cake recipe and tips please! DD is 1 on friday eek!

[Littlef00t]

So I have acquired 3 round cake tins of different sizes, and silicone number tins. I really want to bake her her birthday cake.

I need something super easy as don't really do baking, can muster a banana cake at a push and previously cup cakes have been dense.

I have a kenwood chef random wedding present

Was thinking just chocolate or Victoria sponge, but i don't have two tins the same size, and prospect of slicing one in half is daunting. Just cook one then cook the other?

What about filling and frosting? I've heard of buttercream...?

Heeelp!

This is pretty foolproof. It needs cream/ice cream to go with it as it's very rich though:

www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/easy_chocolate_cake_31070

I have always found cooking from the recipes on the sides of packets to be very soothing - they are designed to be straightforward and bombproof.

If you buy a packet of Stork and a packet of Tate and Lyle icing sugar, there is a perfectly fine recipe for a basic sponge cake on the Stork and a recipe for buttercream on the sugar packet. If you don't have any way of weighing accurately, you could think about buying a Cook's Measure, they cost about £8 and are brilliant. A cheap pair of digital scales would only cost about £10 but they break a lot more quickly.

Oh re tins - slicing in half is not as bad as you think but I would just make two different sizes, put the bigger one underneath and put jelly tots or hundreds and thousands on the exposed bottom bit. Or stand jelly babies on the lower edge as a kind of guard of honour

Oh I like the ideal of a 'deliberate' three tier job! I've got scales. Getting excited now!

Any tips for lining tins to ensure nothing sticks? I've bought some greaseproof paper and have a oil spray I usually use.

Meandjulio I know what you mean about packet recipes, I've been using a pancake recipe from the packet of flour that we finished about 4 years ago. I feel a trial run coming on!

I finally invested in some silicon liner sheets from Robert Dyas and after hoiking my bosoms madly at the price for a small sheet, am very very glad I did - I now have pieces cut to the size of the base for my two main tins. Before I had the sheets, I spent years trying to cut corners by just quickly greasing the tins but finally admitted that it's MUCH better if you grease/spray, line with greaseproof and then spray again (or just turn them over.

So first attempt was rather dense, suspect self raising flour was old? Think I'm going to try a light lemony cake now.

Ah. Ok, I would say use self raising and baking powder too. Also even if using an all in one recipe like the packet one, do it in the old Victoria Sponge way, i.e. cream fat and sugar for much, much longer than you think you need to, then small amounts egg added each with a spoonful of flour, until you finally fold in the last of the flour.

Then just double check whether you are cooking it in a fan oven at the temperature for a non-fan oven? Fan oven usually about 10 deg cooler.

Or just give them dense cake - they will likely only eat the icing anyway.

Hehe thanks for the tips. Did a lovely lemon cake it went really well!

Bought 20cm tins in the end as all recipes seemed designed for them, and researched what techniques made cakes light and fluffy. Rather pleased if I say so myself.