Friday 12 July 2013

Rectangular Sponge Cake 35cm x 24cm

For my celebration cake baking this week it wasn't about creating a great piece of artwork but working on a recipe that would work in my new cake tin and rise beautifully. The cake tin is 35cm x 24cm and is rectangular. This is the tin I use for most of my shaped cake designs so it is important to get the recipe right. 

I originally made a 6 egg recipe for the tin, however, I found that the cake was very dense and hadn't risen properly so I did a bit of research on the internet. I found out that using butter in cakes is important. I have previously used cheap soft spread and found that my mixtures where very soft, apparently this results in dense cakes. So I used proper butter for this recipe. I also looked up recipes and decided to up my egg content a little and used 8. Finally I added baking powder to my recipe to help it lift a little. 

Ingredients:
400g Butter
400g Self Raising Flour
400g Caster Sugar
1tbsp Cocoa
8 Eggs
2 tsp baking powder

Method:
Cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the flour, cocoa and baking powder (I know this breaks from the convential order but I've always done this to prevent splitting) and mix together. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing them in carefully. Pour the mixture into an already lined tin and place in the oven. I cooked this at 180oC (fan oven) for around 30 minutes and then 20minutes at 150oC. I checked the cake with a knife and it came out clean so I left it to cool on a rack. 
Cake just turned out of tin, upside down!! 
I decided to decorate the cake with orange buttercream. This was made with 300g Butter, 600g Icing sugar, 2 tsp of orange essence and 2 tbsp of milk. I cut the cake in half, yes it was risen enough to do that this time, and place it in the middle and over the top. I then decorated it with various bits I had in the cupboard including chocolate chunks, honeycomb pieces, marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles.
Finished cake
The verdict: The cake looked like the correct quantity for the tin when raw, it was around 3/4 full so room for rising. When I got it out of the oven it looked like it had risen really nicely and felt very light and fluffy when I pressed on the top. Thanks to my bake-O-glide the cake has come out of the tin beautifully and has a great height to it.
Sliced cake
The cake tasted really good, I would add a little more cocoa next time but I'm really happy with the overall recipe. This will be perfect for the Eeyore cake I'm creating next week. 

10 comments:

  1. I'm so glad I've finally found a great blog with infomation over how to make and bake a large rectangular cake - and in metric measurements too.

    Thank you :-)

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  2. Made it this evening - turned out great! Thanks for posting and for sharing your journey to find the ultimate recipe - that gave some useful tips (using real butter) and somehow gave me more confidence that this would really be a good recipe. Going to use it for my son’s soccer pitch birthday cake

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  3. Easy recipe to execute. Sponge cakes never work for me but this one doubled in size in the oven! Strongly recommend this recipe.

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  4. Thank you for this, just the information I was looking for x

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  5. My baking trays are 30 x 32cm could you give a recipe please....

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  6. brilliant recipe thank you so much!

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  7. Did you slice the cake in half after to add a central filling or create 2 rectangular cakes from this recipe. I struggle to cut a cake without breaking it!

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  8. When placing eggs in, do you beat them in or fold them, if folding they wouldnt mix in well would they?

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  9. I was very happy with this - until I turned the temperature down - and it sank! I'd actually put my oven timer on to make sure I left it for the correct time at each temp. I'm having another go, with a 'mTtemperaturetemperature'temperature.

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