Birthday Cake

This is a cake I made for a friend's daughter's birthday. It is a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. This cake has three layers, and I used 1.5 times the cake recipe and twice the icing recipe. I have included the normal quantities below, which make a two layer cake or 18-24 cupcakes depending on how big they are.

Birthday Cake

The recipe for this cake has been taken from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook.

The icing has been adapted from a Williams Sonoma recipe.

Ingredients:

For the Cake:

1 cup / 225g unsalted butter or baking margarine at room temperature

2 cups / 400g sugar, granulated or caster

4 large eggs at room temperature

1 1/2 cups / 180g self rising flour

1 1/4 cups / 150g plain flour

1 cup / 240ml/g whole milk at room temperature

2 tsp vanilla extract

For the Icing:

1 cup / 225g unsalted butter, at room temperature

4 cups / 500g confectioners sugar (depending on taste), sifted

2-3 Tbsp whole milk at room temperature

2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

For the Cake:

Preheat the oven to 180˚C/350˚F

Grease and flour 2 x 8inch cake pans, or line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.

In the bowl of an electric mixer using a flat beater, or using a handheld mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

Sift the flours into a separate bowl, and give them a quick mix.

One at a time, beat the eggs into the butter and sugar mixture, then the vanilla extract.

In 3 additions, starting and ending with the flour, beat in the flours and the milk.

This does not need to be exact, beat in c.1/3 of the flour mixture, c.1/2 of the milk, c.1/3 of the flours, c.1/2 of the milk, c.1/3 of the flours

These pictures show the creamed butter and sugar and the finished batter.

Divide the batter evenly between the pans, or fill the cupcake liners evenly.

Bake until it passes the clean knife test. c. 30 minutes for a layer cake, c. 12-15 minutes for cupcakes.

For cake layers, cover the top loosely in foil if you notice it is browning quickly.

Let cool in pan for 15 minutes, then remove and let cool completely.

These are what my layers looked like. Hardly perfect, but icing hides everything.

For the Icing:

In the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, or using a handheld mixture, combine all ingredients.

Beat on low speed to mix together, then crank it up to medium/high to make the icing smooth and fluffy. Add sugar/milk to adjust the sweetness and consistency as desired.

Once the icing is your desired texture and sweetness, add food dye if you are so inclined.

This is my icing progression. Covering the top of the bowl in cling film has helped massively to contain the sticky sugar clouds. Remember this is twice the usual quantity.

Assembly:

Level your cake layers

Cut toe tops off the cakes so they are level, and easier to ice and stack.

Put the first layer onto the desired cake platter and spread icing over the top.

Stack the second layer on top, spread icing over the top and put the third layer on top.

I tend to put the top layer on with the flat side down so that there are fewer crumbs and the top surface is as flat as possible.

These photos show the assembly process thus far:

Next, cover the entire cake in icing, using icing to fill in any gaps.

As you can see, it does not look perfect, I am not quite there yet with my icing.

Then, decorate!

I used a combination of flowers, butterflies and writing icing to decorate and personalise this cake.