A delicious chocolate traybake cake, decorated with chocolate buttercream and sprinkles! This Easy Chocolate Traybake Cake is quick and simple to make, and requires no special equipment. Perfect for any time you need an easy peasy chocolate cake!
This blog post contains affiliate links, this means if you click on a link and go on to buy the product I recommend, I will get a small commission, but you will not be charged a penny more – thanks in advance!
Need a quick and easy cake to feed a crowd?
This Easy Chocolate Traybake Cake is your answer!
It takes just 1 hour to make (plus 1 hour of cooling time), needs no fancy equipment or clever cake-making skills and makes 24 easy-to-cut slices.
Perfect for birthday cakes, children’s birthday parties, bake sales, playdates, taking to the office, dinner parties… and really any time you need a quick and easy chocolate cake to feed a crowd!
How to make Easy Chocolate Traybake Cake
This Chocolate Traybake Cake really is so easy to make.
First you need to make a simple chocolate sponge cake by beating together butter and sugar, then mixing in eggs, cocoa powder and flour. Tip the mixture into a traybake pan and bake for 30 minutes. Allow the cake to fully cool, then decorate.
The decoration on this Chocolate Traybake Cake is super easy too! All you need to do is mix butter, icing sugar and cocoa powder to make a simple chocolate buttercream. Then spread the buttercream on the cake and top with whatever chocolate sprinkles you fancy!
(Full recipe given in the recipe card below.)
No special equipment required
The great thing about this simple chocolate traybake, is you don’t need any special equipment. All you need is a bowl, a spoon, a traybake pan and a knife!
(If you don’t already have a traybake pan, I highly recommend THIS ONE, as it can be turned into an airtight storage tin for the cake, once the cake is baked and decorated.)
A great chocolate cake to make with kids!
Because it is so easy, this is a great recipe to make with children!
It would be a great way to keep your kids occupied after school or on a wet weekend… and they will almost certainly have a lot of fun decorating it with all their favourite chocolate sprinkles 😀
Can you use different decorations?
Yes – absolutely! You can use any kind of sprinkles or chocolate decorations you fancy.
I used:
But you other good decoration options include:
- Smarties
- Maltesers
- Terry’s Chocolate Orange
- M&M’s
- Hundreds and Thousands
- Chocolate Vermicelli
- Chocolate Chips
- Mini Gingerbread Men (for a Christmas vibe)
- Mini eggs and Creme eggs to make an Easter Chocolate Traybake Cake
Want more easy traybake cakes?
I have lots of easy-but-delicious traybake cake recipes! Here are some others you may like…
- Easy Carrot Cake Traybake
- Easy Victoria Sandwich Traybake Cake
- Union Jack Traybake Cake
- Easy Coffee and Walnut Traybake Cake
- Easy Gingerbread Traybake Cake
- Easy Christmas Cake Traybake
Easy Carrot Cake Traybake
How to line a traybake pan – the easy peasy way!
It’s important to line the traybake pan for this chocolate cake. But don’t worry – lining a traybake pan is not difficult at all with my easy peasy method!
Simply cut a piece of baking paper the width of your cake pan and quite a lot longer than the length. Then cut a piece of baking paper the length of your cake pan and quite a lot longer than the width.
Next, grease the base and sides of your cake pan with butter. Then place one of your pre-cut pieces of baking paper across the base of your pan and up two of the sides (you should cut it long enough so it covers the base and two sides and sticks up above the sides a bit).
Grease the base of your pan again (it help the paper stick), then place the other piece of baking paper the opposite way so that it covers the base and the other two sides and sticks up above sides a bit too.
Finally grease the base and sides again, just for good measure (in theory, cake shouldn’t stick to baking paper – in practice, an extra layer of butter really does help the cake come off the paper better!)
Not only is the cake pan now beautifully lined (without any complicated maths or measuring!), but the overhanging baking paper will serve as sort of ‘handles’ to help you lift the cake out of the tin and onto the cooling rack – so no more tipping the cake up-side down and back again!
How to store Chocolate Traybake Cake
To keep it fresh, store this Chocolate Traybake Cake in an airtight cake tin. I highly recommend THIS TIN, which you can use both to cook the traybake in and to store it in afterwards.
(The best thing about this tin is you can keep the traybake flat, meaning all that hard work you did on decorating it won’t get messed up when you store it or if you have to transport it somewhere else!)
How long will Chocolate Traybake Cake keep?
About 5 minutes!
No, seriously… this cake will keep for up to a week, if kept in an airtight container. (Though it will taste at its best in the first 2-3 days.)
Can you freeze Chocolate Traybake Cake?
Surprisingly, cake freezes really well! However, you should freeze the cake BEFORE decorating it. Once completely cold, wrap the cake first in a double layer of baking paper and then in a double layer of foil. Properly wrapped, the cake should keep in the freezer for up to 3 months.
If you like this recipe…
…you might also like:
- Easy Cocoa Powder Brownies (No Chocolate Required!)
- Triple Chocolate Brownies
- Easy Peasy Chocolate Tiffin (Only 4 Ingredients!)
- Easy Peasy Rocky Road
- Easy White Chocolate Rocky Road (Only 3 Ingredients!)
Triple Chocolate Brownies
Easy Chocolate Traybake Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 350 g butter or margarine softened (see Note 1)
- 350 g caster sugar
- 6 large eggs
- 350 g self-raising flour
- 75 g cocoa powder
- 4 tablespoons milk
Buttercream
- 200 g butter or margarine softened (see Note 1)
- 400 g icing (confectioner's) sugar sieved, (this is really important or you will end up with lumpy icing!)
- 50 g cocoa powder sieved (this is really important or you will end up with lumpy icing!)
Decoration
- Any kind of sprinkles you like!
- I used: Dr Oetker Chocolate Sprinkles
- And: Tesco White Chocolate Stars
Instructions
Making the cake
- Pre heat your oven to 180C / 160C fan / gas mark 4 / 350F. Grease and fully line a traybake pan (33x23cm / 13x9inches).
- Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy looking. (See Note 2.)
- Add one egg and beat until combined. Repeat with the other eggs, adding them in one at a time.
- Add in half the flour and fold it in gently.
- Stir in the cocoa powder.
- Add in the remaining flour and fold in gently.
- Stir in the milk to loosen the cake batter slightly.
- Tip the mixture into the lined traybake pan. Smooth over the surface with the back of your wooden spoon.
- Put the cake tin in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes. When it’s ready, the cake should be pulling away slightly at the sides. To be sure it’s done, push a skewer (or a teaspoon handle if you don’t have a skewer) into the centre of the cake. If it comes out clean, the cake is done. If it comes out covered in mixture, pop the cake back in the oven for a few more minutes and check again.
- When the cake is cooked, remove it from the oven. Leave in its tin for 10 minutes, or until cool enough to handle, then turn out onto a cooling rack. (Use your grill rack, if you don’t have a cooling rack.)
- Leave the cake to completely cool before decorating. (Approximately 1 hour after you have removed it from the tin.)
Decorating the cake
- Make up the buttercream by mixing the softened butter, sieved icing sugar and sieved cocoa together – you can do this by hand or with an electric beater. I always do it by hand – it’s not very much effort if you are only doing a small quantity. (PLEASE NOTE: the butter must be softened first or it will be almost impossible to mix! Add a drop or two of water if you still find it hard to mix.)
- If the cake has domed in the centre, trim it down so it is more-or-less flat. (Yes I know that means you lose a bit of cake, but… cook’s perks, right?)
- Spread the buttercream all over the flat cake top, using a knife.
- Finally, decorate the cake with chocolate sprinkles and/or whatever else you fancy!
Notes
- I much prefer the taste of a cake made with butter, but the problem with butter is that, if it has been in the fridge, it is rock solid! However, I learnt a very simple trick from the amazing Mary Berry… Fill a bowl with lukewarm water (the temperature of a very little baby’s bathwater). Chop the butter into 1cm cubes. Drop the cubes into the water and leave them for 3 minutes. After 3 minutes, tip the water out. (I use my hand to stop the little butter cubes coming out with the water.) And voila! You should now have perfectly soft butter.
- You can absolutely make this cake with an electric mixer, simply put all the cake ingredients in a large bowl and mix with an electric mixer for about 2 minutes until it looks like cake batter. However, I prefer to do things the old fashioned way (with a spoon and arm power!) and have given you my traditional method above.
- Suitable for freezing. (Undecorated cake only.)
- Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only.
Pin Easy Chocolate Traybake Cake for later
FREE 4 Week Easy Dinners Meal Plan
Have you got your hands on a copy of my meal plan yet? If not CLICK HERE to download a copy of my FREE 4 Week Easy Dinners Meal Plan today!
Don’t want to miss a thing?
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or why not subscribe to my blog and get delicious, stress free recipes straight to your inbox every week?
Disclosure
This blog post contains affiliate links, this means if you click on a link and go on to buy the product I recommend, I will get a small commission, but you will not be charged a penny more – thanks in advance!
Leave a Reply