Baking
57 recipes
Birthday butter cake with chocolate ganache plus a Strawberry cake version
- Plan Ahead
- Special Occasion
My daughter Mila came up with this one - and is my other daughter Sienna’s favourite cake now! This is the Goldilocks cake – it suits everyone.
It has a great texture, firm and crumbly but still soft. Lovely, simple cake flavour, and the best type of icing, chocolate ganache, drizzled over. Top it with sprinkles and you have a birthday cake.
Double this recipe for a great big birthday cake, which we always do now, and cook for an hour at least – test with a skewer and cover the top with foil if it is browning too much. Set the alarm and check it at 40 minutes for this. Depending on the oven I have cooked this for 1 1 /4 hours.
Serves 8- 10 and more if doubled like below. V. Freezes well.
Pictured: Birthday butter cake with chocolate ganache- doubled recipe
Ingredients
- 125g unsalted butter, softened
- ¾ cup caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 ½ cups self-raising flour
- ½ cup milk
- Ganache icing –
- 100ml double cream
- 300g chocolate of choice – I like Lindt Sea salted caramel, dark
- To make ganache – wait until the cake is cooled as it is quick to make - place the chocolate, roughly chopped, into a heatproof bowl. Warm the cream gently, in a small pot on the stove, until it is simmering. Then pour over the chocolate. Let sit for a few minutes to melt. Then mix until smooth and pour over the cooled cake, letting it drizzle down – use a spatula to spread it evenly over the cake.
- Preheat oven to 180 °C
- Grease and line a 23cm round cake tin with baking paper.
Method
In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar til light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each until all combined.
Add half the flour and half the milk, mix carefully on a low speed.
Then add the other half and mix carefully again to not overwork the batter. Stop as soon as it is incorporated.
Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and smooth the top.
Bake 35 – 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when you test the middle.
Allow the cake to cool for 5 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack to cool.
This cake is ready for either a ganache icing like in the picture or cover with whipped cream and berries of choice.
You could cut it in half and fill with cream and berries, sprinkle the top with icing sugar.
For Strawberry cake with a cream icing -
Double the Birthday cake recipe as above, and replace half the milk with 2 x 250g punnets strawberries, hulled and blitzed to a puree
Cream icing – from the “An easy, no chocolate, no butter chocolate cake!”
Cream Icing for Cake
1/3 cup butter, softened
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract, preferably the paste with the lovely flecks of vanilla bean
1 pound (3 1/2 cups) sifted confectioners’/icing sugar- must remove lumps
3 to 4 tbsp milk
To make cream icing: – Cream butter, salt, and vanilla, beating until light and fluffy.
Add sugar gradually, beating after each addition.
Add 3 tablespoons milk, beating until smooth.
Beat in more milk until desired spreading consistency is reached. You can spread it as you like or place in a piping bag to decorate as pictured
Pictured: Strawberry version of the Birthday butter cake with a cream icing
Dietary preferences
- Vegetarian
