How to Bake a Simple Cake: Our Easy Childhood Chocolate Cake Recipe!

In the recipe below you’ll find the basic formula for how to bake a cake, vanilla or chocolate. This is the way I was taught to make chocolate cake as a child. It let us bake cakes without referring to a recipe. This can be used for a simple cake, or made into a shaped cake which is a birthday tradition for us! Below is an explanation and lesson to explain all the options then a very simple recipe at the end. The idea is you too won’t need a recipe to bake a simple cake with what you have!

The Basic Formula to Bake a Simple Cake

• The basic cake formula is a 1:1:1:1 ratio of sugar, fat, eggs and self raising flour. Mixed together this will bake into a cake.
• As an egg weighs about 2oz, you need the same number of ounces of sugar, fat, and self raising flour, and half the number of eggs. That’s all you need to remember! Now you can have an easy to remember cake recipe that even kids can use. E.g. 4oz butter, sugar, self raising flour.. and one egg. This is the example in the recipe below.
• You can then alter it, tweak ingredients, and change the flavours but that’s the basic idea and it works! We learned this as little kids and it’s still the recipe my whole family uses now.

Some Substitution Options

• The most usual substitution for us is: subbing out about 1/4 of the flour for cocoa to make a chocolate cake. So in a cake with 4oz flour, switch to 3oz flour and 1oz cocoa.
• For a more “fudgey” cake: You can sub 1/3 of the flour for almond meal – this is especially good in a chocolate cake!
• In place of self raising flour: you can add 2/3 tsp baking powder for every egg in this recipe.
• For fully vegan or gluten free cake recipes: I have our go to options in The Whole Treat ebook HERE.

WHAT ABOUT CUP MEASUREMENTS?

Each ingredient has a different cup volume for its weight amount. This simple cake formula is more easily done with a scale – especially for kids. But you can look up the cup volume for each ingredient you’re using, on google. Google “2oz of coconut sugar (or other ingredient) in cups” to get the volume you need.

Items I use for this recipe:

WHAT CAKE PAN SIZE?

You want the batter 3/4′-1/5″ thick uncooked in the pan so you can use any cake tin as long as you adjust the cooking time.

“2 by 2” cake: I put this amount of batter in 2 ramekins for single serving mug cakes.

“4 by 4″ will fill a 7-8” cake pan with a thinner, stackable cake.

6 by 6 can also fill the same size 7-8″ pan for a thicker single layer cake. For a tall cylindrical baby smash cake I’ve also used a 6 by 6 batter in an 8″ square and cut out 4 thin circles with a cutter or glass to stack for a mini layered cake.

16 by 16 I would use for a 4 layer large cake a 7-8″ cake pan like the one in the picture below – it will feed 20+ people.

HOW MANY SERVINGS DOES IT MAKE?

In general you’ll want half an egg per serving – that’s half a “2 by 2” for each person. So a 2 by 2 as mug cakes will give you two desserts. And a 16 by 16 cake in 4 layers will give you more like 30 servings.

HOW MUCH COOKING TIME DOES IT NEED?

This will depend on the size of tin and your oven. The best thing is to know what to look for. You’re looking for the cake to be just firm to the touch, and for a skewer to come out clean if gently inserted in the centre. That usually means 10-15 minutes for an individual mug cake and 15-20 minutes for a 7-8″ pan cake in a 170C/340F oven. For anything larger than a 8″ round I’d check it after 25 minutes and add more time in 5-10 minute increments. Give it a touch and if it’s not springy yet, give it some more time.