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I originally made a 6 egg recipe for the tin, however, I found that the cake was very dense and hadn't risen properly so I did a bit of research on the internet.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.