A Birthday Cake for Work – Part 1

So the day’s cake making mission has finally finished! This making of the celebration cake went so much better than my first one and that was all thanks to my new present – a hand mixer!

My bf’s mum bought this for me a few weeks ago and I can’t thank her enough! It made this cake making sooooo much easier and I can now whisk egg whites without getting arm ache! By using this I could bring the mixture together in about 10 mins which was great.

I started by weighing out 8 eggs…

I then used an equal amount of sugar, margarine and self raising flour and basically mixed it all together. I made three layers so I got through A LOT of ingredients! Here is my method in pictures….

Sugar and margarine

Blended together

Add the eggs in two at a time

Gradually add in the flour until incorporated

As you can see, it was quite a basic batter with a little twist…….a bit of vanilla extract! I added in a capful of this when the flour had been incorporated. I think it subtly added to the cake and it smelt amazing when it was cooking!

The secret ingredient!

I then whisked the mixture for another 5 mins or so until it was light yellow in colour and was full of air. I then poured it into the MASSIVE roasting tin that I was using and smoothed the top.

Ready for the oven

I wasn’t sure how long to cook it for as it obviously wasn’t a regular sized cake. I decided to cook it for 30 mins at about 190C/Gas Mark 5, rotating halfway, and then check it. Surprisingly it was quite cooked by then. I left it in for another 5 mins just to make sure it was cooked and then took it out. It cooked very evenly and didn’t rise too much in the middle. The edges are a little burnt but I am going to cut them off tomorrow when I ice it. (my bf is so looking forward to eating them!)

Cooked!

I did made another 2 layers after this and the whole process took about 2 + half hours – not too bad. Our little kitchen was boiling hot afterwards and we had to fling open the windows in the kitchen and living room to cool down!

All three layers

To get the lining off the bottom of the cakes I had to flip the layers onto a chopping board otherwise they would have broken in half! Our living room table was covered in cake crumbs after that! At the moment all three layers are sitting on my big square cake board on top of our oven, ready to be iced tomorrow. I’ve sandwiched the layers with baking paper for the moment and covered the whole board in clingfilm.