School Cake!
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A delicious and simple vanilla school cake with icing and sprinkles – the classic easy bake for everyone.
YES THAT IS RIGHT… THE RECIPE IS FINALLY HERE! School cake!! This, again is one of the most highly requested recipes to go on to my blog, and I thought it was about time… just in time for school starting again this year!
This cake is iconic – and one of the cakes that no matter how ‘plain’ it is – I will ALWAYS want to eat it. There is just something about it. It’s sweet, but delightful. If you haven’t heard of it… you must try school cake now!
Sponge
School cake, for those who don’t know… is a really very simple recipe. It’s a vanilla sponge cake, topped with water icing and sprinkles. It really is that simple. If you include the water as an ingredient for the icing, it is eight ingredients, but I don’t think thats too bad.
The cake is light and moist (if I can use that word…) with the vanilla flavour. You simply have to make a basic cake sponge. Theres something about the vanilla sponge and sprinkles together that tastes DELICIOUS however, if you wanted a chocolate version – follow this recipe here.
- Butter – for the sponge mix, you can use a block butter at room temperature, or a baking spread – both work well
- Sugar – I use caster sugar as it’s a basic cake mix, and you want the classic flavour from the sugar
- Eggs – the best method is to weigh the eggs in their shells. You want to get the weight to as close to 400g as possible, and then ideally match the sugar, flour and butter to match this weight for the best bake
- Flour – self raising flour is the best and classic. You can make your own by mixing in 2 level tsps of baking powder per 150g of plain flour, and mixing in before using
- Vanilla – this is optional, but I love the flavour it gives
Egg weighing method
So as mentioned above in the sponge section, weighing eggs is a useful method for cakes like this. I have listed 7-8 eggs, as eggs can vary in weight. I typically use medium eggs in the UK when baking, and these general range in size so they’re not always identical. I often buy mixed weight boxes as well so these can vary from 43-73g usually.
The best tip, is to weigh your eggs in the shells, to get as close to 400g as possible. Say the eggs weigh 411g, you then need to use 411g butter, sugar and self raising flour. The equal ratios create the perfect simple sponge that will bake wonderfully and it’s very hard to get wrong! The vanilla extract is optional, but I LOVE it.
Making the cake
To get the perfect bake, you really need to make sure you mix the ingredients properly. I use my stand mixer, but an electric hand mixer works, or even a bowl and spoon. Make sure if you use unsalted block butter that it’s at room temp, but baking spread can be fridge cold.
Beat the butter and sugar together until creamed, light and fluffy. It’s important to make sure you do this first in my eyes, compared to the all in one method, as it’ll make sure you don’t have any butter lumps. I then add in all the eggs, self raising flour and vanilla and mix again. If mixing with a bowl and spoon, you may want to add these a smidge slower so you don’t get in a complete mess, but otherwise mix until you see it’s combined and stop mixing.
Traybake tin and baking
I use a 9×13″ traybake tin to make this school cake, as I use it for all my traybake cakes. I love my chocolate traybake cake, my gin and tonic traybake cake and so on… but this one?! This school cake may be my favourite of all my traybake cakes.
If you aren’t sure on your oven, I always recommend using an oven thermometer so it bakes correctly! An oven I once had to use was 50ºc out! Absolutely awful for baking. After your oven is correctly heated, you want to bake the cake until a skewer comes out clean, and its not making a bubbling/crackling sound when you listen carefully.
If you cake sinks after coming out the oven, it needed longer baking. It really is that simple! It’s still going to be edible, so don’t be disheartened. Baking is all about learning the science behind it.
Decoration
Once the school cake is cooled, you can make the icing. It really is as simple as mixing water into the icing sugar, pouring it over the cake evenly, and sprinkling on some sprinkles! It’s as simple as it can get. I use these sprinkles as they are beautiful, bright and fun! They are 1000% bake stable and UK legal.
I use a basic icing sugar and water mixture for my icing, and it’s so simple. Add a little water at a time, and give it a really really good mix before adding more as you don’t want to make it too thin. Some people like to use milk in the icing, but this does mean the cake needs to be stored in the fridge as the milk is a fresh product, and this will dry the cake out, so water is best.
The most painful part is waiting for the icing to set a bit so it doesn’t pour everywhere – but it is worth it! This school cake is one of the best bakes ever, and I really hope you love it.
Making a smaller version
This tin is obviously quite large and I love making the traybake sized version as I would personally call it the ‘classic’, however I know not all of you want to make a cake that big.
So to make a smaller 9″ square version, you need to use: 250g unsalted butter, 250g caster sugar, 250g self raising flour, 5 medium eggs and a dash of vanilla extract. Bake into a lined 9″ square tin for around 35 minutes. Leave to cool fully, and then decorate. For the decoration on a smaller cake, I would use about 350g of icing sugar and 3-4tbsp of water for the icing.
Tips & Tricks
- I use these sprinkles in my decoration
- I use this cake tin for my traybake tins
- This cake will last 3-4+ days at room temperature
- This can freeze for 3+ months
School Cake!
Ingredients
Cake
- 400 g unsalted butter
- 400 g caster sugar
- 7-8 medium eggs
- 400 g self raising flour
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Icing
- 500 g icing sugar
- 4-5 tbsp water
Sprinkles
- Rainbow sprinkles
Instructions
For the Cake
- Preheat your oven to 180ºC/160ºC fan and line a 9x13" traybake tin with parchment paper.
- Beat together your butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add in the eggs, self raising flour, and vanilla extract and beat again until combined well.
- Pour into the tin and bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes, or until baked through.
- Once baked, let the cake cool fully in the tin.
For the Icing
- Add the icing sugar to a medium sized bowl, and gradually add the water, mixing well each time, until a thick icing paste is made.
- Carefully spread the icing over the cake evenly.
Sprinkles
- Sprinkle over your favourite rainbow sprinkles!
- Leave the icing to set for about an hour, and enjoy.
Notes
- I recommend using a 9x13" traybake tin for this recipe.
- This cake will last for 3-4 days once made.
- For a 9" square tin - I would recommend a 5 egg/250g sugar/butter/flour mixture. Baked for 35 minute - see more notes in the post
- You can use any sprinkles you like, but I use these sprinkles!
ENJOY!
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J x
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Hello! Love your recipes! I wash just wondering when we weigh eggs, is it better to be under or over the recommended amount. Because honestly, I can never get recommended amount, heheheh! Thank you 🙂
When you weigh the eggs, you want them to be as close to the recommended amount as possible. So say the mixture its 250g, and your eggs weigh 260g, use that. Then, match the other ingredients to the weight! Ideally its not too far away from the recommended weight (even if its a little less, or a little more) x
Should eggs be weighed in the shell? 😬
Yes they should!
Just made this cake for the second time in a week, safe to say everyone in my family loves it! Children currently lingering while the icing sets haha! Perfect for school lunchboxes x
Hi Jane,
I love all your recipes, thanks for sharing them with us. Once you have creamed together your butter and sugar and then added the rest of the ingredients, how long do you mix it for? I know the recipe says ‘well combined’ but I’m unsure what this means. I’m so worried about overmixing!
Hi Jane
Congratulations on the book!
If I wanted to make this a a loaf cake, do you think it would work?
Love your recipes! Xxx
Love this recipe. So simple and satisfying. Family winner with this. Made relatively large cuts and still got about 16 pieces put of my square cake tin. My son loved helping put the sprinkles on. Just love your recipes.
I always try to make sure mine is level before putting in the oven (tapping the tin and smoothing it over) but it always seems to come out higher one side! Any tips on how to fix this? It’s a bit of a pain when it comes to icing it.
Hi my mum made this when I was little I’ve continued to do this for my children and grandchildren. She made it as it was a quick cheap cake to make when money was short .
Looks like a great recipe! Is there a good way to stop the coloured sprinkles from leaking their colour through the icing?! Thanks!
hi i just got your book i have not had time to sit down and give it a good look have gave it a quick flick truth is your school cake in the book thank you for reading this email youes faithfully joan ryan [Mrs ]
Can this be frozen?
Can I ask why the school cake recipe asks for light soft brown sugar? I made this tray bake today, it is lovely but my sponge is definitely deeper in colour than the pictures you’ve shown no doubt because of the light brown sugar.
Oops sorry was meant to be caster haha!
Perfect as always! I made this today and took your advice and weighed the eggs, good thing really as it took 10 eggs xx
Can you provide dry measurements in cups for those of us without a kitchen scale?
I’m going to ask a no doubt stupid question 😬
If I set the oven to 160c fan should the thermometer read 180c or 160c?
The thermometer should read the temperature that the oven should be x
I have tried this with 9 inch tin and less ingredients but wasnt cooked in 35 minutes
Think it will be okay if I just sprinkle choc chips on top of I don’t want the icing sugar?
First time making this recipe, it’s absolutely amazing!!! Turned out perfectly, lovely light sponge 👌😋 Never have any issues with your recipes, always turn out sooo good!! XX
I’ve tried this recipe twice now and it isn’t cooking in the middle? Any tips on what I’m doing wrong?
I’d buy an oven thermometer and check its actually correct – sometimes oven temps can be out by a large amount which can affect cake mixes really badly! x
We did this today and used choc sprinkles as coukdnt find the normal ones. Still tastes lovely!
Made this today using a 9 by 13 inch tray and it cooked perfectly in 45 minutes. A lovely deep sponge too. Will definitely make again! You must have cut your slices on the big size as I got 16 slices easily!
Hi Jane
Iv noticed you’ve used light brown soft sugar for this recipe – interesting! What difference does that make to the cake as opposed to Caster Sugar? X