It’s always a bit tricky to know what cake to make as a birthday cake.

It needs to be sufficiently festive and indulgent to set it apart as something you don’t usually eat on the other 364 days of the year. Ideally, it would be the birthday girl or boy’s favourite but there are always other guests to take into account, so it can’t be too niche. This is even more true when children are involved.

I have recently been faced with this exact dilemma twice in quick succession, and having tried this amazing cake the first time, it was an easy decision to go with it the second time too. In fact, it’s going to be difficult to oust it from its current favoured-cake standing.

It’s a wonderfully light chocolate cake which doesn’t dry out – critical for a birthday cake which often needs preparing the day before and may go on for a couple of days after. The icing is a simple but delicious cream cheese mixture and although any decoration that comes to mind would work well, I don’t think you can beat hundreds & thousands for that party vibe.

The recipe here is only slightly adapted from the Konditor & Cook’s Curly whirly cake and when their first recipe book went to print, it was their best-selling cake in their bakeries. Once you’ve tried this recipe, I think you’ll see why.

Birthday chocolate cake with creamy icing and hundreds & thousands

Ingredients

For the sponge cake

• 250ml whole milk
• 275g light muscovado sugar
• 100g dark chocolate
• 175g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 30g cocoa powder
• 100g salted butter, softened
• 2 large eggs

For the icing

• 200g cream cheese
• 400g icing sugar
• 50g unsalted butter
• 1/2 tsp vanilla powder

Method

Set the oven to 190°C and leave to heat up. Grease two 17cm sandwich tins and line the bottoms with baking paper.

Pour half the milk into a small saucepan and add half the muscovado sugar. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, then add the chocolate and stir until it has melted. Leave the mixture to cool a little.

Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into a bowl.

In another bowl, beat together the butter and rest of the muscovado sugar, ideally in a mixer. Add the eggs one at a time, each one followed by a spoon of the flour dry mix, with the mixer running.

Add the rest of the dry mix and then the remaining milk and chocolate-sugar-milk mixture and mix until smooth. The batter will be very runny – don’t be alarmed!

Pour the batter into the two tins and bake for 25 minutes. The cakes should feel reasonably firm when you lightly touch the top.

Once the cakes have cooled completely, take them out of their tins and peel off the baking paper.

Now melt the butter for the icing. Combine the cream cheese and icing sugar in a mixer, then add the liquid butter and vanilla until perfectly incorporated.

Spread just less than half of the icing on one of the sponges, add the other cake on top and spread the rest of the icing on top. Add a generous sprinkling of hundreds and thousands before the icing begins to dry or they’ll roll off!