Birthdays are a great time to make the most of your home cooking skills and to treat someone special to a beautifully baked cake. Whether you are a novice home cook, still negotiating your way around recipe books, appliances and supermarket aisles of ingredients, or someone more experienced and confident, a fresh from the oven cake is always appreciated. Especially if you make the effort to find out what the birthday boy or girl likes best. 

My eldest son Jovan turned 14 today and is fond of sponge cakes. In particular the vanilla scented, four-egg kind that when cut up and served, has a rich, sunny yellow colour from the butter and eggs. I used a Victoria Sponge recipe from Nigella Lawson’s cookbook, How to be a Domestic Goddess. It’s an old favourite that I’ve done time and time again, and even successfully altered to create a coconut and apple version which I blogged about previously on the 14th August this year. 

Once the cake had cooled I cut out the numbers one and four using a template created on a sheet of baking paper. This was chilled overnight and then early this morning, I doused it in smooth, silky chocolate ganache, followed by desiccated coconut. It is essential to make the sponge component of this cake the night before as it really needs to set and chill in the fridge. This makes it much easier to handle when it comes to lifting it out of the baking tray and while decorating. 

Ganache is so, so easy to make that icing a cake becomes a breeze, even for those people who find the task of tackling icing too much to bear. I melted 120 grams of Lindt 70 per cent dark chocolate with 240 mls of pure cream in a small saucepan over a low heat on the stove top. Keep stirring continuously to prevent the mixture burning. When melted, remove from the heat and using a hand whisk, beat in 25 grams of unsalted butter and 2 – 3 tablespoons of sifted icing sugar depending on whether you want more or less of that bitter-sweet flavour. Once the ganache resembles edible silk, pour it slowly over your cake/s. If you would like a thicker ganache, for filling a cake or applying in more concentrated layers all over, then reduce the amount of cream to equal the amount of chocolate you are using and omit the butter. So for example, 120 grams of chocolate, 120 mls of pure cream and only 1 – 2 tablespoons icing sugar. 

A quick, curly strand of piped whipped cream sprinkled with shavings of milk chocolate completed Jovan’s Lamington Birthday Cake. Teenagers, like my son, still look forward to blowing out the candles, being fussed over and wolfing down their birthday cake. However, they are well beyond the themed character and cutesy-style decorated cakes of their primary school years. This Lamington Birthday Cake can be adapted for other age groups too. I served up the easy-to-cut pieces with an extra dollop of whipped cream – yum! 

What about the birthday dinner?

I made my son’s current favourite, Chicken Paprikas or Paprika Chicken but this time I used a whole, two kilogram well-raised chook. 

I used my own recipe for Chicken Paprikas published on the 18th July 2013. After sauteeing the ingredients in my large cast iron Le Creuset pot on the stove top, I clamped on the lid and put it into a preheated oven at 200 degrees (conventional setting) for exactly 100 minutes. After 70 minutes, I removed the lid to allow the succulent bird to brown. Served with buttered, steamed rice, it made a much appreciated family birthday dinner.