Birthday Custard Sponge in Shaped Tin

Asked by ellencat. Answered on 4th May 2015

Full question

Hi, I was just wondering would it make a mess of the Birthday Custard Sponge cake to bake it all in one in a silicone cake tin and cut it in half after to for the filling. Basically what I am trying to achieve is a birthday cake for my brother in a Happy Birthday silicone cake tin, is there a better cake recipe that would suit this maybe?

Our answer

Nigella's Birthday Custard Sponge (from Feast and on the Nigella website) is a sandwich/layer cake made in two 20cm (8-inch) round tins. We have not tried the cake in any other type of tin or mould so can't guarantee results but looking at the instructions for the silicone mould that is mentioned, it seems to us that you could use a half quantity of the Birthday Custard Sponge recipe, as the mould requires a 2 egg quantity of sponge. We would suggest that you follow the baking instructions that come with the mould.

Make sure that the cake is fully cold before trying to slice it in half. For the icing it is slightly difficult to judge quantities so to be on the safe side make a full quantity of buttercream and chocolate icing and no-one has ever complained about extra icing. We would also suggest looking at Nigella's Buttermilk Birthday Cake (from Domestic Goddess), which works well in metal shaped cake tins. Again we would guess that you need half of the recipe of cake batter (use one egg yolk instead of a half egg), though we again cannot guarantee the results as we have not used this particular mould ourselves. It may also be easier to make a full quantity of batter, fill the mould half full and then bake any leftover batter as cupcakes.