Many people I know have fond memories of the baking at school – like chocolate concrete and this super easy school traybake.
what is school cake?
School cake is basically a vanilla sponge cake topped with white glace icing and coloured sprinkles.
It’s also known as retro sprinkle sponge cake, old school cake, old school dinner cake, school sponge, school sprinkle cake or sprinkle traybake.
Just like this chocolate mint cake, it’s baked as a traybake style cake – making it very easy to cut into squares.
vanilla sponge cake with sprinkles
The sponge is incredibly fluffy and soft. It was often served with custard in school – yes, even with the icing and multi-coloured sprinkles!
Sometimes the basic vanilla sponge would be topped with jam, sprinkled with coconut and served with custard. That was a huge favourite of mine!
It was the BEST dessert on a cold Winter’s Day! My coconut and raspberry jam loaf cake is based on that pudding.
the perfect cake for birthday parties
This retro vanilla sponge traybake is the perfect easy bake for parties and celebrations – and here’s a quick list of reasons why!
it uses basic store cupboard ingredients
The sponge doesn’t take that long to bake
It’s such an easy cake to decorate you could leave the kids to do it. I let my toddler go nuts with the sprinkles for these photos – and why not?
ingredients for school dinner cake
Baking margarine. I know I go on about using proper butter so much I must sound like a broken record, but for sponge cake, but in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with using a baking margarine such as Stork for cakes. It makes the lightest, fluffiest sponge! I always use margarine in my all-in-one Victoria sponge cake.
Caster Sugar will give you a better texture and rise than normal granulated sugar. The finer grains of caster sugar dissolve much quicker into the butter, so it’s always a much better choice for baking. Having said that, if I only had granulated sugar in the cupboard, it wouldn’t stop me from making the recipe.
Eggs – you will need 5 large eggs, at room temperature (not extra large)
Vanilla extract.
Self raising flour. You won’t need any extra raising agents for this recipe.
If you only have plain flour in your cupboard, you could make your own self raising flour by adding 2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder. Make sure you sift the flour and baking powder together before using.
The decoration
Icing sugar, sifted to remove any lumps.
Water to make the glacé icing.
Coloured sprinkles of your choice. For that proper 1980’s look, I use the classic “hundred and thousands”. You’ll easily find them in most supermarkets around the UK.
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