Two One-Bowl Cakes from Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Afternoon Sweets

This month’s theme for the #rainydaybitescookbookclub was budget-friendly recipes, and I couldn’t resist diving into Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Afternoon Sweets. I picked two cakes from the “One Bowl Cakes” section—My Perfect Snacking Afternoon Cake and the fun Confetti Cake. Both are included in the free preview of the book online, making them easy to access if you’re curious to try them too.

1. My Perfect Snacking Afternoon Cake

The snacking cake was, true to its name, pretty perfect straight from the oven—warm, soft, and just the right level of comfort. But here’s the thing: all the one-bowl cakes in this chapter of the book look beautifully flat in the photos. Mine? A proud little dome.

I knew the fix. The trick to achieving flat-topped cakes is to wrap a damp kitchen towel (or use a cake strip) around the cake tin before baking. This helps the cake bake evenly without rising too quickly around the edges and forming a dome.

2. Confetti Cake: A Test Run for Pride

Armed with my flat-top strategy, I moved on to the Confetti Cake, which I was testing as a trial for a rainbow-themed bake sale at work. I wrapped my cake tin in wet towels—and success! A beautifully even cake.

But the next challenge came with the sprinkles. I followed the recipe’s recommendation but hadn’t factored in that sprinkles are essentially sugar. With 400g of sugar already in the batter (I reduced it to 350g), the additional 100g of sprinkles made the cake overwhelmingly sweet for my taste.

Worse, the sprinkles melted into the batter before baking, giving the cake a murky greenish-yellow hue instead of a vibrant confetti look. A quick chat with ChatGPT taught me that I should’ve used jimmies—those oblong-shaped sprinkles designed not to melt into batter.

Buttercream Blues (and a Raspberry Plan B)

For the frosting, I tried to follow the book’s suggestion of using freeze-dried raspberry powder. I couldn’t find it easily in UK supermarkets, so I blitzed whole freeze-dried raspberries in my food processor—carefully dried beforehand—but still ended up with a paste instead of powder. The raspberries just weren’t dry enough. I added some pink food colouring to help the buttercream along, but it wasn’t quite what I envisioned.

Next time, I’ll go for a plain buttercream and colour it in rainbow shades. I’ve also had success making a vibrant raspberry syrup from frozen berries, which I used for my daughter’s birthday cake in January. It gives great flavour and colour—definitely worth considering if freeze-dried fruit isn’t working for you.

Final Thoughts & Pride Cake Plans

Despite some hiccups, I learned a lot from these two cakes—and both are very doable on a budget. I’m excited to bake my Pride version of the Confetti Cake next month, this time with proper jimmies and a rainbow icing swirl topped with colourful sprinkles.

If you’re new to baking or working within a budget, these two recipes are a great place to start. And don’t forget the wet towel trick—it’s a game changer for perfect, flat cakes.