The perfect butter cake recipe for kids' birthday cakes

Birthday cakes are a different beast to other types of cakes. Not only do they have to appeal to cute (and often fussy) little people, but they also need to be strong enough to be cut, shaped and stacked into all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes (and often then sit in the blazing sun on a party food table for a lengthy period!).

So, when baking a birthday cake, you need the right recipe. And by ‘right’, I don't mean that deliciously moist secret family recipe that your family has passed down through generations. I mean one that is yummy but plain enough for fussy little cake eaters and moist but strong enough to withstand shaping.

To save you the time and energy of testing recipes yourself, below you’ll find ours. The perfect recipe. A balance of everything that goes into a perfect kids’ birthday cake.

Shape Tins’ Perfect Birthday Party Butter Cake

Ingredients:

• 250g butter
• 1 cup castor sugar
• 4 eggs
• 3 cups self raising flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

Cream butter and sugar in an electric mixer until light, white and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Remove bowl from the mixer. Add the vanilla essence into the milk. Sift the flour and fold 1/3 of the flour into the rest of the mixture gently, alternately with the milk/vanilla. Continue until all of the flour and milk are combined.

Place mixture into a well-greased cake tin (see our tips for greasing cake tins here) and bake in a pre-heated oven (160 degrees fan-forced, 180 degrees without fan). The cooking time will depend on how much batter you put into the tin. See our handy guide here.

Note: This recipe makes approximately 1350g of cake batter (almost exactly the equivalent of two packet cake mixes).