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I was talking to the kids recently about school dinners and the puddings they get compared to when we were younger. One thing that they still make at school is a simple old school cake for pudding and it’s something I have such fond memories of.

What is an old school dinner cake?

To me, an old school sprinkle cake is a big, flat sponge cake topped with icing and sprinkles. It’s light and fluffy in the middle, firmer around the edges, tastes vanilla and sweet and is the perfect way to end any school dinner.

But, to my surprise the children said school don’t put icing on the cake – they still have rainbow sprinkles but no icing. So, since then I’ve been making traditional old school cakes at home all the time to give the kids that real retro school cake experience and I thought I should share our old school cake recipe with you too.

How do you make this old school cake?

This school vanilla sponge cake recipe is a simple tray bake sponge cake recipe, topped with homemade icing and any sprinkles you have to hand. It’s a super easy cake to make in bulk, simple to slice and is great when feeding the masses. You can literally use any size baking tin or baking tray and vary the recipe accordingly – with roughly 50g of butter sugar and flour for each egg that you use. The traybake tin we use for this easy vanilla traybake recipe, using the ingredients as listed below, is 32cm x 22cm.

For this recipe we use butter, caster sugar and self raising flour. However, granulated sugar or golden caster sugar also work well. Plus, if you’d rather use plain flour, go ahead and just a teaspoon baking powder or baking soda to the mix.

We always top this bake with a simple glace icing of icing sugar and water as per the recipe, but you could also top with homemade buttercream or even a cream cheese frosting to make it look a little more fancy for a special occasion. This rainbow sprinkle cake would make a fantastic birthday cake recipe, especially if catering for a lot of people.

Is this the same as a Tottenham Cake?

A traditional Tottenham Cake is really similar to an old school cake. It’s a vanilla sponge traybake but topped with pink icing and dessicated coconut. With this sprinkle sponge vanilla cake you can use any colour sponge cake icing you like so could easily do pink icing if you wanted – or any colour to match a birthday or party theme.

This easy vanilla tray bake may not have a fancy name like Tottenham Cake but it’s an absolutely delicious sponge tray bake cake that the whole family will love. It’s so simple to make a vanilla sheet cake, with just a few ingredients, and you can be sure that this tray bake recipe will turn out perfectlt every single time.

Can you vary this recipe?

This old school sponge cake recipe is super easy to vary. You could add dried fruit, nuts or chocolate chips into the mix. You can have it plain instead of iced and you could even add some cocoa powder to make a lovely chocolate traybake instead, topping with melted chocolate. But, even this super simple vanilla traybake cake is wonderful – especially if baking it to share.

I’m working on some more old school pudding recipes – like jam roly poly and custard, rice pudding and a chocolate custard recipe! You really can’t beat traditional school puddings and I’ll share the recipes as soon as I’ve perfected them.

If you’re looking for other recipes to try our almond muffins, cherry yogurt loaf cake or Madeira cake recipes? You can see all our recipes to date here. We also have a lot of slow cooker recipes if you’re looking for meal inspiration!

What equipment do you need for this easy old school sprinkle cake recipe?

You can make this recipe simply with things you already have in your kitchen but here are the things we use in case there’s something you don’t already have:

As you can see, it’s all things you probably have already. We use sheets of baking paper to guarantee that bakes come out of the tin easily and they’re so easy to use.

So here’s our Old School Sprinkle Cake Recipe:

Ingredients

250g unsalted butter at room temperature
250g caster sugar
5 eggs
250g self raising flour
1 tsp vanilla extract or essence

To decorate

Sprinkles
350g icing sugar

Recipe

Preheat oven at 160C/300F/Gas 2 and line a sheet cake pan or brownie pan
Cream together the butter and caster sugar in a large mixing bowl
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well
Pour the cake mixture batter into the lined/greased loaf tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 40 minutes until brown on the top and a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
Make icing sugar by gradually adding water to the icing sugar and mixing well. It should be nice and thick when ready.
Cover the top of the cake in icing, add the sprinkles and leave to set before slicing and serving.

If you’d like to print or pin the Old School Sprinkle Cake Recipe for later you can do so below. Enjoy!

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