Proper Birthday Cake!

Hullo,

So this week I will be making a birthday cake as it's my Mamma's 80th Birthday. This book (100 Fondant Models for Cake Decorators by Helen Penman) is a god send:

O.B bought me this as a pre-Christmas pressie to help me create some Christmas goodies. Needless to say it has come in very handy. Not only does it tell you how to create multiple fondant creatures, it also gives you recipes and lots of advice on what tools you'll need and how to best present your cakes. For example, I never thought of covering my cake boards until I read this book. Now I do it religiously and utilise the covered board as a blank canvas to further decorate and enhance the cake.

Anyway the point to this post is to share the fab recipe found in this book. It's a very dense mixture so if you're wanting a Victoria Sponge-like recipe keep looking. The purpose of this cake is for it to support lots of fondant decoration (like in the photo below) thus it needs to be a heavy cake.

A Victoria Sponge Cake, although it tastes deliciously light and airy, will not support lots of fondant. Thankfully I happen to love dense cakes, this tastes to me like proper vanilla birthday cake. Slice it up and stick a layer of vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam in it and nom nom! Reminds me of my childhood birthday cakes.

So here is the recipe for a 20.5cm (8inch) round cake or the same can be used for a 18cm (7inch) square cake. The recipe is take from the book100 Fondant Models for Cake Decorators by Helen Penman. If you fancy buying it, it can be bought on amazon for about £7. It definitely recommend buying it.

Ingredients

• 425g of unsalted butter- take the butter out of the fridge ahead of mixing your ingredients. It's easier to cream the butter and sugar.
• 425g caster sugar.
• 7 large eggs- I break this all into one bowl and beat them lightly (just so the egg yolks break).
• 550g self raising flour- sifted.
• 1 tbsp of milk- I have forgot this before and the cake has been fine. If you add too much milk it's difficult it shape the mixture into your cake tin as described in the method below (see step 8 in the method below).
• 2 and a half tsp of vanilla ESSENCE- I add this to the lightly beaten 7 large eggs. It must be essence to get the best vanilla flavour, sometimes people pick up extract and this does not have the same intensity in taste.

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Farenheit). Each oven is different, you will know yours and the more you bake the more personalised your baking will become. My oven is pretty hot so I preheat mine to 160 degrees Celsius and towards the end I may drop it to 150 after checking the cake. I also place the top shelf as high as I can in the oven and put an empty baking tray on it. When ready I place my cake into the oven on the bottom shelf. As it takes a while to get the cake cooked all the way through these steps help prevent the outside from burning.
2. Line your cake tin with baking parchment. Some people wrap the outside of the tin with multiple layers brown parcel paper as this can also help prevent burning but I find this isn't necessary for my oven with this recipe.
3. Beat the softened butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. If you want to do it the old fashioned way (by hand) get ready for some achey arms, I prefer to use a hand whisk. If you're lucky enough to have a food mixer then this will help you no end at this stage!
4. Add one egg at a time and beat into the mixture (I add a little bit of my lightly beaten eggs and vanilla extract mixture at a time). Add a little flour in between each addition of egg to prevent curdling.
5. If you haven't added your vanilla extract into the egg mixture, then add it to the cake mixture now.
6. Add the milk to the cake mixture and gently mix it in.
7. Add the sifted flour a little at a time and fold in gently by hand. I recommend using a large metal spoon.
8. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the top. I create a dip in the middle of the top of the mixture to make the mixture look like a doughnut. I do this because in the past I was smoothing the top of the cake and popping it straight into the oven. When I took the cake out it appeared cooked but the middle was hollow. I have found that creating this dip/hole in the middle of the mixture prevents this from happening.
9. Cook for 1 hour 20 mins. 
10. After the baking time has elapsed use a skewer to check the cake is cooked all the way through. Check the middle of the cake as this takes the longest to bake. If the skewer comes out clean, the cake is baked. 
11. If the skewer does not come out clean give the cake another 10-15 minutes and repeat step 10. Keep cooking and checking the cake every 10-15minutes until it is cooked through.
12. Once it's cooked through remove the cake from the oven and leave it to cool completely in the tin. I cover it with a tea towel and have left it overnight to cool before. Removing the cake from the tin too soon while it's still hot can compromise the shape (it may fall to pieces). Do not decorate the cake until it's cooled completely as your icing will melt.

Well there it is my favourite proper vanilla birthday cake recipe! Love it! Hope you do too!

xoxo