Have you ever desperately needed to bake a cake in under an hour? If you’re even thinking no, that’s probably a lie. There’s always a last minute celebration, a friend having a bad day, or a late night craving (how it started for us).
After a couple of those late night cravings, Greg and I discovered it’s not actually that hard to get yourself a freshly baked cake. But the fun part is seeing if you can produce a fully formed cake in an hour.
Bake a Cake in Under an Hour
The key to pulling together a cake in under an hour is simplicity in technique and minimal ingredients. You’ll see our favorite recipe for this below, complete with time ranges for the various steps to stay on target. Our favorite recipe has a lot of eggs but the low total of 8 ingredients makes it a keeper for us.
Other time savers
Simplify your decorations. Sift powdered sugar on top, melt and drizzle some chocolate, use a microplane to zest whatever citrus you have on hand, make whipped cream, go to your herb garden and find a sprig of something and stick that on top. The possibilities are endless.
The key to this cake looking impressive is layers. It doesn’t take that much more time to bake the two cakes. But if making frosting or finding the ingredients for frosting in your fridge is slowing you down, use something else as filling. Jam, whipped cream, and Nutella are all viable options.
One Hour Cake Challenge (recipe adapted from Cake by Moira Kalman)
Ingredients
- 2 sticks unsalted butter
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 ½ cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 large eggs, plus 3 large egg yolks
- 1 cup buttermilk (or, as Greg and I do: milk with a dash of vinegar or lemon juice to curdle it)
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Directions
- Step 1 Preheat the oven to 350º.
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Step 2
Gather ingredients (5 minutes)
Get the butter out first and soften it in the microwave. Measure out the rest of the ingredients. -
Step 3
Mix ingredients (5-10 minutes)
With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar together. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together. Stir the eggs and yolks into the butter and sugar mixture one at a time. Gently incorporate flour and sugar together. -
Step 4
Prep cakes (5 minutes)
Butter and flour two 8 inch cake pans (two thinner cakes cook faster than one). Cut parchment paper to fit the bottoms (the easier it is to get the cooked cakes out of the pan, the faster this will be and the nicer the cake will look). This is a great task to ask a teammate to do.
Pour cake batter into the two pans. If you have a scale, use it to make sure the two pans have equal batter in them. -
Step 5
Bake your cake (25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean)
While the cake is baking, make your frosting and choose your toppings. Pro tip: Gently heat some jam for in between layers to make it faster to spread. -
Step 6
Finish your cake (15-20 minutes)
Pull the cakes out of the oven, flip onto a cooling rack, and put them in the fridge for fast cooling.
Cool the cake as long as you can. If there’s time, let it cool on the counter. If you have to get it done right away, give it ten minutes in the fridge and then stack your cakes, sandwiching jam between the two.
Frost the cool cake and decorate however you like (consider powdered sugar on top if your cake is still a bit warm).
