Birthday baking.

It's birthday season at my building -- also known as baking season. And you know I love it.
Since people know I like to bake, I've had several requests.

Fiona wanted a giant chocolate chip cookie.

Easy enough.

Lisa wanted Funfetti with buttercream icing.

A bit more time intensive.

The funny (slash frustrating) thing about baking in the UK is that they do measurements completely differently. As in you can't buy a "stick" of butter, and everything is in grams, so I'm constantly having to consult Google for conversions.

But that's neither here nor there. What you want is recipes. So without further ado:

Giant Chocolate Chip Cookie

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter

1/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 cup plus 2 tbsp flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

(Note: I never measure chocolate chips, and I can't find semi-sweet here,

so I used a mix of milk and dark chocolate.)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (or 175ish C).

Beat butter and sugars till fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and beat to combine.

Mix flour, salt, cream of tartar and baking soda in a separate bowl. Combine dry ingredients with butter mixture until well blended.

Stir in chocolate chips. Eat (at least) one handful of chocolate chips. Spread dough in a 9 inch round pan lined with parchment paper.

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Funfetti Cake (from scratch)

 

I'd only ever made Funfetti from a box, but it's basically just a white cake with sprinkles in the batter. Nothing too difficult. 

Ingredients
12 tbsp butter
2 eggs

2 egg whites
  2 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups flour
  3 tsp baking powder
1/2 salt
  1 1/2 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 bottle of sprinkles

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 F (175ish C). Line two 9 inch round pans with buttered parchment paper. 

 Beat butter and sugar together. 

Add eggs and egg whites, beating on a slow speed until just combined. Add vanilla.

Sift together the dry ingredients. 

Gradually add the dry mixture into the butter mixture, alternating with the milk.

Add the sprinkles. I didn't measure. I just used about a (smallish) bottle. 

Pour the batter into pans and bake about 30-35 minutes, until the edges are light brown and a toothpick comes out clean (if you don't have a toothpick, dry spaghetti works well).

Allow to cool completely before frosting.

For the vanilla buttercream, I used this recipe. If you want the frosting to be white, make sure to use clear vanilla flavoring.

Then decorate to your little heart's content!