Find me a man who doesn’t like Birthday Cake and you’ll find me a man in denial.
Birthdays are fabulous, fun and a great excuse to make a delectable sugar laden CAKE! Adam is an absolute pain to buy a present for so it is always good to know that, without fail, he will always want cake.
Take 1
I started out with grand designs of a chocolate mud cake with a hint of Kirsch (cherry liqueur) and a buttercream icing. Unfortunately that plan failed when I forgot to add the additional plain flour which resulted in an excellent, gooey, chocolate pudding…not quite the cake I was after. Baking FAIL. The most annoying part is that it is my favourite chocolate mud cake recipe! At least it was put to good use as dessert with a dollop of cream!
Take 2
Sunday morning started early with Take 2. As I had used up all of the chocolate in the house on Take 1, it was time for a re-think. Why not the opposite, a simple vanilla cake?! Hell, the cake was going to be covered in a rich buttercream, so why not. Thankfully Adam is pretty happy-go-lucky!
My Take 1 grand design had always included a pastel swirl icing as demonstrated by Rosie on Sweetapolita, so during a quick scan of her recipes I decided to try her Vanilla Birthday Cake Recipe as well.
There were a few parts to this Birthday Cake which didn’t go to plan…there was no blue food gel or cardboard cake boards in the size we needed at the cake store, I buggered the chocolate mud cake and in my haste with the vanilla cakes I used two different size pans! The result is still tasty, but let’s face it…a bit girly…but my long-suffering husband, bless him, sang its praises anyway. xx
Vanilla Cake
There are a few variations from Rosie’s recipe, but the result was still light and fluffy, but strong enough to hold all the buttercream.
Ingredients
- 1 & 1/2 cups of milk
- 210g egg whites at room temperature
- 1 whole egg
- 2tsp vanilla bean paste
- 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp almond extract
- 440g plain flour
- 450g caster sugar
- 25g baking powder
- 1tsp salt
- 170g unsalted butter, softened, cut into cubes
- 80g vegetable oil
Method
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees C and line two, eight inch cake tins.
- In a small bowl combine 1/2 cup of the milk, all vanilla, almond extract, egg whites and whole egg. Stir to mix and set aside.
- Sift the flour twice and combine with sugar in a mixer for about 30 seconds on a low speed.
- On low speed, add butter and oil to combine, then add the remaining 1 cup milk. Increase speed to medium and mix until combined.
- Add egg, vanilla and milk mix which was set aside earlier in three batches, allowing the mix to combine in between additions.
- Pour half of the mix evenly into two tins (you will need to cook in two rounds, unless you’re lucky enough to have four tins!). A good tip is to evenly weigh out the mixture, which will help get nice even layers.
- Place the rounds in the oven for 20 minutes, check to see if they are ready. If they need more time, just set the timer for 2 minute intervals and re-check until ready.
- Repeat step 6 to cook the two remaining cakes.
What about the rest?
So what about the recipes for the chocolate mud cake and the swiss buttercream??
After my Swiss Buttercream wrangling for this cake I have decided to expand my icing repertoire…so I’m keeping this one aside for another post. As for the chocolate mud cake. Well this is an absolutely gorgeous cake and the epic fail of Take 1 just does not do this puppy justice! They’ll both be back, I promise!