Previously, my go-to birthday cake was always my favourite carrot cake recipe (admittedly, it’s still my favourite cake of all time). But… a couple years ago, my friend Aimee shared her go-to birthday cake recipe with me, and I have never gone back. It is the easiest, yummiest cake you can make. And what I love the most about it is that you can modify it with whatever fruits are in season (or even chocolate, if you’d like!).  It is essentially a basic butter cake recipe, and you can add anything you’d like to the recipe: lemons, oranges, passonfruits, berries, etc. You can also mix things up by adding different icings on top: chocolate, lemon, cream cheese, vanilla, etc.  It also consists of just five basic ingredients. That’s it!

Aimee found the recipe in an old Steiner School recipe book with a collection of the student’s favourite recipes. The recipe was submitted by a Kathy Cooper, who shares her grandma’s easy peasy cake. The title of the recipe is: ‘Nanny Luff’s 1234 cake’.  I love that Nanny Luff, whoever she is, has become a household name in both our families — between us, we have  nine children, so that’s lots of Nanny Luff cakes to bake on birthdays! : )

Here’s the recipe for Nanny Luff’s 1234 Cake:

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup milk
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 cups self raising flour
• 4 eggs

Preheat oven to 160°C.

Cream the butter and the sugar.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after you add. Add half the flour and beat. Add half the milk and beat. Add the remaining flour and milk and beat again.

Now add whatever you like to flavour the cake — sultanas, cocoa, lemon, berries, etc.

Bake for approx 1 ¼ hours or until cake browns and a toothpick comes out clean.

Use whatever icing you’d like on top.  For the passionfruit cake pictured above, I simply used a small nub of melted butter, a cup of icing sugar and one passionfruit (seeds and juice).

Enjoy! x