Laci's Birthday 2025. (& Birthday cake recipe)

Maintaining the birthday mood all day long wasn’t difficult, but the best part of a birthday is still the cake and the gifts! Rú and I could hardly wait for evening to arrive and for the (slowly roasted over many hours based on perfect tips from Laci’s mom) marinated beef roast to be ready, while we were already deep into baking the cake alongside it.

I have a very reliable recipe that I heartily recommend even to beginner cake makers (I don’t consider myself a great baking wizard, just a joyful baker at most), because it’s truly simple, the batter behaves well—at least every bake so far has turned out exactly as the recipe intended.

Ingredients

Cake layers:

20 dkg flour
0.5 package baking powder
1.5 tablespoons cocoa powder (I envisioned white batter this time, so I simply omitted it)
20 dkg sugar (mine was coarse brown sugar this time and I think it paired perfectly with the end result)
4 eggs
0.5 dl cooking oil
0.5 dl lukewarm water
Extra for this birthday cake: about 10 dkg crushed almonds

Cream:

70 dkg mascarpone
40 dkg hazelnut spread

Preparation

Mix the mascarpone and hazelnut spread together and put it in the fridge.
Egg yolks + sugar + oil + water: beat until foamy.
Flour + baking powder (+ cocoa): gradually add to the yolk mixture bit by bit and mix. (At this point, I added the previously toasted fragrant crushed almonds.)
Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks, then gently fold into the batter.
Bake at 170°C for 45 minutes until done.
Slice the finished batter into two or three horizontal layers and let it cool.
Assemble the cooled layers with the cream from the fridge, decorate the top with the remaining cream and all earthly delights the celebrant loves, then refrigerate until serving.
Stuff ourselves full of it after letting the birthday person cut it and serve us slices.

For us this time, we made a cake from half the batter and cream, and cupcakes from the other half, because at a previous birthday we overate ourselves sick on this cake. This lifehack allowed for smaller cake slices and still brought this treat to the table in cookie form too. (This year we very consciously kept to a proper, or at least non-stomach-upsetting, portion size.)

It’s truly divinely delicious—here’s to every birthday celebrant whose table it might grace!