How to make a Giant Butterfly Cake

I’m a keen baker, but lack confidence in my decorating ability, so I tend to go for simple styles. Occasionally I’ll bake something incredibly pretty, like my lemon curd cake. It was so pretty, it was featured in BBC Good Food Magazine, which was nice. For my birthday this year, I was low on time and energy, but needed something tasty but pretty to share with my family. I’m quite big on whimsy, so I decided to bake a giant butterfly cake.

Here in the UK, butterfly cakes are a bit of a birthday tea staple. Little sponge buns, with their lids cut off, filled with buttercream, and the top put back on in the shape of butterfly wings. They’re incredibly simple, but they are quite a joyful little bun. Whilst I was wondering what to bake for my birthday, I thought an upgrade to my standard Victoria sponge, but with a butterfly cake top would be simple but really quite fun. I was not wrong.

I know my Victoria sponge cake recipe is a good one, but this re-working of it really made it extra brilliant. It was as light and airy as a butterfly wing, but the vanilla buttercream and butterfly wings really made it extra special.

Giant Butterfly Cake

Ingredients:
200 g caster sugar
200 g softened butter or margarine (I use Stork)
4 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 tbsp milk
200 g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder

Buttercream
200g butter, softened
200g icing sugar
A large slug of vanilla extract, approx. 10mls

To finish
1/3 of a jar of good quality raspberry jam
Icing sugar for dusting

How to make a Giant Butterfly Cake

Method:
Heat your fan oven to 190c. Grease two 20cm sandwich tins, I also lined the bottom of each tin with a circle of baking parchment. In a large bowl, beat your butter and sugar together until fluffy (I used a hand mixer). Add the eggs, milk and vanilla and combine, then add the flour and baking powder and mix together until you have a smooth batter.

Divide the mixture equally between the two tins. You can weigh them to make sure they’re fairly equal if you’d like. Bake in your pre-heated oven for around 20 mins until golden and they’re cooked through. Remove from the tins and leave to cool on a cooling rack.

Once your sponge layers are as cool as they can be, thickly spreading good quality raspberry jam between them and sandwich them together on a cake plate or stand.

To make the buttercream, sift your icing sugar to make sure there are no lumps. Then beat the softened butter and icing sugar together with the vanilla extract until it is fully combined and fluffy.

Take a sharp knife and carefully cut a circle out of the top cake layer. Don’t cut all the way through, you’re looking to create a small crater for the buttercream to sit in. Carefully remove your circle from the cake and set it aside.

You can either pipe or spoon your buttercream into your cake crater, it’s up to you. I used a spoon. Fill the crater and smooth the buttercream, I sort of made a small ravine in the middle so there was a dip where I’d be putting the butterfly wings.

With a sharp knife, cut the circle of cake in half and place them onto the buttercream ravine. As this is much bigger than your average butterfly cake, I used my spoon to build up the buttercream underneath the wings to support them, which worked really well. Once you’re happy with how the wings look, you just need to sprinkle a tiny bit of icing sugar over the top, and it’s ready to be shared.

The cake did look awesome, everyone was oohing and ahhing over it, which is exactly the response I was going for. It’s a great, simple, fun bake and one I suspect I’ll be asked to make over and over.

How to make a Giant Butterfly Cake

Kitchen Essentials: Fail-Safe Sponge Cake Recipe

As a parent one of the key skills you need is the ability to quickly knock up a tray of cakes for the school bake sale, or for a party you’ve forgotten about, or maybe just because it’s Thursday and you and your brood fancy some cake.

Before I became a mum I was a competent cook, but a terrible baker. After several years of trial and error and a bin full of failed bakes, I’ve finally found a recipe and method which works every – single – time for me.

sponge cake recipe

Over the years I’ve tried everything; Delia recipes, Nigella recipes, recipes passed down through the generations. I’ve tried a thousand different bakes and finally hit upon this – it’s my “Works Every Time” Sponge Cake Recipe. And it does, it really does.

I use this recipe as the basis for every sponge recipe I ever make now. If I’m baking buns or cupcakes, I just cut the recipe down by a third (so 200g of sugar instead of 300g etc). This is enough to make a three layer show-stopper of a cake, over the weekend I used this sponge recipe to make two lemon drizzle cakes in loaf tins – much to the delight of my family.

If I find myself with too much cake batter and not enough tin, then it’s just an excuse to make a few little buns on the side for a teatime treat for the boys.

Malteser Butterfly Cakes

One of the key things you need to do is to really, really beat your butter (or margarine) and sugar together until they are really light and fluffy. This makes a massive difference to the texture of your cake (trust me, a Dutchman who made incredible cakes give me that tip).

Works-Every-Time Sponge Cake

If you need a sponge cake recipe which works every single time – try this. You won’t regret it!

Ingredients:
300 g caster sugar
300 g softened butter or margarine (I use Stork)
6 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp milk
300 g self-raising flour
1.5 tsp baking powder

Method:
Heat your fan oven to 190c. Grease three 20cm sandwich tins. In a large bowl, beat your butter and sugar together until fluffy (I used a hand mixer). Add the eggs, milk and vanilla and combine, then add the flour and baking powder and mix together until you have a smooth batter.

Divide the mixture equally between the three tins, you can weigh them to make sure they’re fairly equal if you’d like. Bake in your pre-heated oven for around 20 mins until golden and they’re cooked. Remove from the tins and leave to cool on a cooling rack.

I’ve made quite a few things with this sponge cake recipe. Looking back I’ve not really blogged many of those bakes, but here they are some examples of great bakes…

My easy sponge cake recipe which works every time! #Baking #EasyBakes #Cakes

Recipe: Malty Malteser Butterfly Cakes

In my family, September is birthday month and this week it was my brother’s turn to blow out the candles. We weren’t having a big bash for him, but you can’t successfully have a birthday without cake. My brother loves Maltesers, so I thought I’d make him some quick and easy butterfly cakes, but with a Maltesery twist.

I’ve had a jar of malt extract lurking in my cupboard for a little while now, so I knocked up a standard sponge recipe and added a big dollop of the lovely malty stuff. Baked my buns until they were golden and whipped up a chocolate buttercream icing complete with a big bag of smashed up Maltesers. There was no room for candles, but at his age they’re verging on a fire hazard anyway!

Malteser Butterfly Cakes

The little Malteser Butterfly Cakes came out a little darker than a plain sponge would. This is because the dark malt extract makes the mixture darker. They’re not overdone, that’s their natural bronzed colour.

This recipe makes around 12 malteser butterfly cakes.

Malteser Butterfly Cakes

4oz Butter or margarine
4oz sugar
1 dessert spoon of malt extract
2 medium eggs
1 teaspoon of baking soda
4oz self raising flour

For the buttercream:
4oz butter
4oz icing sugar
1 tablespoon of drinking chocolate powder
10oz of Maltesers

1. Beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy and the stir in the eggs and malt extract.
2. Carefully fold through the baking soda and self raising flour until combined.
3. Dollop into cake cases, there should be enough to make about 12 buns.
4. Bake in a preheated oven at 190c for around 15 minutes. Once cooked leave to cool.
5. To make the buttercream, beat the butter, icing sugar and hot chocolate powder until soft and fluffy. Bash up the Maltesers and gently fold in.
6. Carefully cut a circle out of the top of each of your cooled cakes, cut the circle in two, dollop a teaspoon of buttercream into the hole and top with the halves to make them look like butterfly wings.

Malteser Butterfly Cakes

If you love butterfly cakes, you might also enjoy my Peanut Butter Butterfly Cake recipe.

Recipe: Easy Peanut Butter Butterfly Cakes

I’ve been doing a lot of baking recently which can only mean one thing, I’m happy. I’m not sure why I’ve been blessed with the gift of temporary inner peace but I’m going with it and enjoying the cakey results. Yesterday on a whim I whipped up an experimental batch of Peanut Butter Cakes. They turned out to be pretty darn good, so I’m sharing the recipe. It’s really easy, if I can bake it then so can you.

Easy Peanut Butter Butterfly Cakes (makes approx 20)

Ingredients:
8oz Butter or margarine (I used stork)
8oz sugar
4 large eggs
2oz peanut hottie powder
1 teaspoon of baking soda
6oz self raising flour

For the icing:
2 big scoops of Betty Crocker vanilla buttercream style icing
2 heaped dessert spoons of Chocolate Peanut butter hottie

Method:
1. Beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy and the stir in the eggs.
2. Carefully fold through the peanut hottie powder, baking soda and self raising flour until combined.
3. Dollop into cake cases, there should be enough to make about 20 buns.
4. Bake in a preheated oven at 180c for 15 minutes. Once cooked leave to cool.
5. To make the icing (yes this is cheaty, but you can make your own buttercream if you want), beat the buttercream until soft and thoroughly mix in the chocolate peanut hottie powder, add a drop of hot water if it feels too stiff.
6. Carefully cut a circle out of the top of each of your cooled cakes, cut the circle in two, dollop a teaspoon of buttercream into the hole and top with the halves to make them look like butterfly wings.

Resist the temptation to eat them all in one go.

So there you have it, really, really easy peanut butter cakes, they’re something that would be great to bake with children, or just by yourself if you’re in your happy place like me.