Recipe | Giant doughnut cake with hundreds and thousands

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A giant glazed doughnut (donut if you prefer!) cake with sugar sprinkles. Surprisingly easy to make and a fun cake for any party.

Giant doughnut cake with pink icing and sugar sprinkles

I honestly can’t remember where or when I first saw one of these. But I do remember thinking, “What a great idea!” If you think I might have seen this on your blog, please let me know so I can thank you.

I used my usual, simple sponge cake recipe. The most difficult bit might be finding the appropriately-shaped cake tin 🙂

Ingredients (makes 2 sponge cakes which, when sandwiched together, make your doughnut cake):

  • 225 g / 8 oz butter or margarine
  • 225 g / 8 oz caster sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 225 g / 8 oz self-raising flour
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 4 level tsp baking powder

Equipment and preparation:

To make my giant doughnut cake, I borrowed my mum’s 18-cm diameter angel cake tin. Fortunately, it has a lovely rounded top, which is perfect for making half a doughnut cake. Here’s a picture:

Angel cake tin 18 cm image

Unfortunately, she only has one tin. So I had to fill it with batter, bake the first cake, turn it out, clean the tin, prep the tin again, fill it a second time… So ideally you’d have 2 identical baking tins you can fill and put in the oven at the same time. This is the assumption I’ll work on when describing the method below.

I also have to warn you that the ingredient quantities above would be better suited to a 20-cm diameter tin. The mixture I made using the above quantities was enough to fill the 18-cm angel cake tin twice and make 6 small cupcakes too.

Method:

Prepare your baking tins. Grease the inside of the tins with butter / margarine. Don’t be skimpy but try to get an even coating of grease. I also put two strips of greaseproof paper in the bottom of the tins to increase my chances of getting my cakes out in one piece!

Angel cake tin 18 cm

Pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees C / Gas Mark 4 / 320 degrees F.

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, beating your mixture after adding each egg. Then add the vanilla extract, flour and baking powder. Stir until you have a smooth batter. If you’re lucky enough to have a mixer, you can just put all the ingredients in and whizz them together in one move.

Spoon your mixture into the two tins. If you want to get your cakes as even as possible you can put your tins on scales and weigh the mixture in. Make sure the mixture is at least 1 cm (0.5 inch) below the top of the tin so there’s space for it to rise. If at this point you realise you have too much mixture, you can use it to make cupcakes/buns (you can pop them in the oven at the same time as your sponge cakes as they will have the same baking time).

Bake your two sponge cakes for about 20 minutes until the tops of the cakes are golden brown and a knife inserted into them comes out clean.

Leave your cakes to cool in the tin for 5 minutes. Run a knife around the inside and outside edge, turn over onto a board and give the top of the tin a pat to encourage the cake out of the tin. If you’re lucky, the tin will come away from the cake easily. If you used strips of greaseproof paper in the bottom of your tin, peel these off the tops of your sponge cakes. Transfer your cakes to a wire rack to cool.

One layer of giant doughnut sponge cake

For the filling I made vanilla buttercream by creaming together 50 g (1.5 oz) of butter/margarine, 100 g (3 oz) icing sugar and 1 tsp vanilla extract. I spread a thin layer of the buttercream between the cakes. On top of the buttercream I spread a thin layer of my mum’s homemade raspberry jam. Sandwich the cakes together to get an unglazed doughnut cake which looks like this:

Giant doughnut cake with filling before icing

Finally, I made up some simple water icing for the final doughnut cake glaze. This is just icing sugar, a little water and pink food colouring. I added the water a little at a time, stirring as I went to get a nice thick icing which wasn’t just going to run straight off the doughnut! I drizzled this all over the doughnut cake and then sprinkled hundreds and thousands (multi-coloured sugar strands) on top.

Giant doughnut cake with pink icing and hundreds and thousands

Giant doughnut cake with pink icing and sprinkles from above

I’m pleased to report it slices very well and is delicious! 🙂

Giant doughnut cake with pink icing and sprinkles filled with jam and cream sliced

 

And if you’re looking for other sponge cake recipes:

School sponge cake with white icing and sprinkles

 

Sponge cake with white icing and multi-coloured sprinkles (hundreds and thousands) inspired by the cake they used to make in the canteen at my high school.

 

 

Lemon sponge cake with white icing and yellow feathered icing sliced

 

 

Simple lemon sponge cake with feathered icing.

 

 

 

Claire Huston / Art and Soul

57 thoughts on “Recipe | Giant doughnut cake with hundreds and thousands”

    • Thank you! I’d like to try to make a chocolate version with white icing and chocolate sprinkles too. Getting the cake out of the tin is the most nerve-wracking bit… otherwise it’s quite straightforward. I believe you can buy a silicone mould, which would make life easier too.

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    • It’s lovely 🙂 I still think traditional doughnuts with a filling are more popular here than the ring ones. But Krispy Kreme has been making big progress here over the last 10 years or so… so people are more familiar with the ring variety now.
      Happy weekend! 🙂

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      Reply

      • Ah yes, I seem to remember my brother-in-law telling me about Krispy Kreme. In Canada have a chain called Tim Horton’s, so I’m a little biased towards them, ha ha. I’ve been wanting to make some baked doughnuts actually. Must add them to the to-bake list! Thanks, Claire, and happy weekend! 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

  6. wooooow! 🙂 It looks just… I want to eat it!
    Hehehe, when I was reading the title then in my head it went like this:” Giant doughnut cake with hundreds and thousands of calories” XD I’d eat half of it in one go though I think!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Thank you! It turned out really well. I was very worried it wouldn’t come out of the tin and it’s be a mess, but in the end it just dropped out, no problem. A silicone mould would probably make it all a lot less stressful… but then I’ve never been much of a fan of those.
      I’d quite like to make a chocolate version 🙂

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      Reply

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