Dot Cakes - Viral Recipe

Recipe: Dot Cake Recipe »

These viral dot cakes are soft vanilla sponge cakes topped with fluffy buttercream and covered in colourful hundreds and thousands! Inspired by New York's famous Dotcakes bakery, these nostalgic mini cakes are fun, easy and perfect for parties or birthdays. I'll show you how to make these from scratch as well as a range of flavour variations to customise these to your taste!

About This Dot Cake Recipe

Dot cakes are the latest cake to go viral on social media. These nostalgic, simple cakes are popular for their simple but delicious comforting flavour finished with a layer of sprinkles. A dot cake is a mini or individual sized cake served in a cup. And these are SO delicious and one of my favourite viral trends. There's something so delicious when you take a spoonful of the soft, downy cake, buttercream and the crunchy layer of sprinkles. My friends and neighbours call these "Fairy Bread cakes".

The cake is a soft, butter sponge cake base covered with vanilla buttercream and then thickly covered with a layer of hundreds and thousands or nonpareils. They were made popular by New York bakery The Dotcakes at Butterfield Market where they sell for $11US each with a 2 cake limit. A lot of people are making them using a box cake mix but it is so, so easy to make them from scratch and I'm going to show you everything there is to know including how to make the cake and buttercream, where to buy the ice cream cups from and how to keep these cakes moist!

The Cake Base You can make the cake base any flavour you like. Try Red Velvet, Chocolate (I recommend my chocolate zucchini cake as it is rich and moist), Vanilla Chip, Gluten Free Funfetti or Vegan Vanilla. I'm doing a classic white vanilla cake but you can really try any bases above baked as a sheet cake. For this vanilla cake I'm basing it on my hot milk sponge recipe that works perfectly for this. You can make 10 dot cakes.

Filling Dotcakes aren't usually filled but I love the idea of them filled with something. Filling ideas are: jam, Nutella, pistachio paste or even fruit like sliced banana or strawberry. Just note that once you add fruit or jam these will have to be refrigerated (without fruit they can keep at room temperature).

The Buttercream The classic American buttercream is great in this as it is nostalgic and reminds of childhood cakes. But feel free to use Swiss Meringue or whipped cream cheese frosting if you prefer. American buttercream also has the added advantage in that it is the simplest to make. Cream cheese frosting needs to be refrigerated.

I've made many sprinkle cakes before and one of my favourites is this chocolate sprinkle cake, this classic birthday cake.

Video How To Make Dot Cake

Video: Dot Cake recipe

Ingredients For Dot Cake

Milk - Use full cream or whole milk.

Butter - I like using salted butter over unsalted for the extra flavour.

Salt - Fine salt (and don't worry your cake won't be salty!).

Sugar - Caster or superfine sugar so that the sugar melts into the batter.

Eggs - 4 large eggs.

Vanilla - This cake is nostalgic so we are using classic vanilla. Use vanilla bean paste, essence or extract.

Cake flour - Cake flour can be bought at the supermarket. You can also make it at home. To make 1 cup/150g/5.2ozs of cake flour replace 2 tablespoons of plain all purpose flour with cornflour/fine cornstarch and whisk well. I make up a big batch of this and keep it in a container ready for baking cakes as it produces a softer texture. Lorraine's tip: if you have room, keep flour in the fridge to avoid pantry moths, especially in the summer.

Baking powder - To help the cake rise. This is different from bicarb. Ensure baking powder is still in date if you don't bake often. I also keep this in the fridge.

Icing Sugar - For buttercream you can use either pure icing sugar or icing sugar mixture. Pure icing sugar makes buttercream stiffer which is what you need when decorating but it is a pain to sift (Lorraine's tip: place icing sugar in a food processor or Thermomix and blitz out the lumps). Icing sugar mixture is easier as it doesn't require as much sifting and produces a soft, more spreadable frosting.

Simple syrup - found at bottle shops as it is handy in cocktail making. See tips below on how to make simple syrup.

Sprinkles - We used hundreds and thousands or non pareils.

Ice cream cups - I bought these ice cream cups from Woolies. They were 10 for $3 and measured 7.5cm/3inch on the base, 9.5cms/3.7inch on the top and 7cms/2.75inches tall. The recipe below yields 10 of these.

Tips For Making Perfect Dot Cakes

1 - Don't use a springform cake tin for this as the cake batter is quite liquid.

2 - Because this cake batter is very liquid, unfortunately you cannot add sprinkles to it to make it a funfetti cake as the colour from the sprinkles will run.

3 - While the cake bakes, you can make the frosting and you'll be done and dusted with your dot cakes in no time!

4 - When cutting out the rounds, don't worry if you can't get 20 whole rounds. You can also cut two semi circles out of cake as it is all covered in buttercream.

5 - Some people use the cup to cut out the cake and you'll need an ice cream cup to do that (rather than a cupcake liner). Ice cream cups also have a straight, hard edge so that you can smooth over the buttercream so that it is flush to the top and you can dip the sprinkles in.

6 - I also like to make a little soak for the cakes just to add a bit more moisture because nobody ever complained that a cake was too moist! You can use a plain simple syrup soak just very lightly soaked. Some also do a light milk and vanilla soak but I wanted to keep these stored at room temperature. To make simple syrup, simmer equal measures sugar and water for 3-5 minutes. Cool and keep in the fridge.

Dot Cake Recipe

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 25 minutes

Cooking time: 35 minutes

Serves: 10

Ingredients Needed

For Cake

• 1 1/4 cups/310ml/11flozs. whole milk
• 1 stick/113g butter
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups/300g/10.6ozs cake flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 3/4 cups/385g/13.6ozs caster or superfine sugar
• 4 eggs, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste

For Frosting and Decoration

• 400g/14oz butter, softened (not melted)
• 900g/2lbs pure icing sugar or icing sugar mixture, sifted
• 1-2 tablespoons milk (2 tablespoons if using pure icing sugar)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste

To Assemble

• 1/2 cup/125ml/4fl oz simple syrup (optional)
• 180g/6ozs sprinkles
• 10 ice cream cups

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 PREP - Line a 40x30x5cm/15x12x2inch solid rectangular pan on the base and sides with parchment. Preheat oven to 160C/320F fan forced or 180C/350F conventional. In a saucepan heat the milk and butter until the butter has melted and stir in the salt (do not boil, just scald the milk). Set aside. Sift the flour and baking powder together into a bowl.

Step 2 BEAT - In the bowl of a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment whisk the sugar, eggs and vanilla on medium high speed for 5 minutes until thick and almost white. Add the hot milk mixture and whisk for 15 seconds or until incorporated. Then fold in the flour mixture on low speed in two lots until smooth (do not overmix). It will be a very liquidy batter. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 30-35 minutes or until the centre springs back when gently pressed. Cover with a baking dish to keep the steam in the cake and cool completely.

Step 3 FROSTING - While the cake is baking, make the buttercream frosting. Beat the butter on medium high speed for 2 minutes until pale. On low speed, add the sifted icing sugar in 4 lots until incorporated. Add in milk and vanilla and beat on medium high speed for 3 minutes until fluffy and creamy. Scoop into 2 large piping bags.

Step 4 CUT - Cut out rounds to match the size of your ice cream cups leaving a bit of room around the sides for the frosting (I used a 7cm/2.8inch cutter). Cut them close together so that you can make as many rounds out of your cake as possible (you should be able to get 20 rounds of cake).

Step 5 ASSEMBLE - Place one round in an ice cream cup and brush or drizzle with syrup. Pipe buttercream around the edge and in the centre. Place another cake round and add syrup. Pipe buttercream around the edge and over the top of the cake. Level off with an angled spatula.

Step 6 DECORATE - Carefully place the sprinkles in a wide bowl with a lip. Dip the top of the cup into the sprinkles and serve.

STORAGE & FREEZING TIPS - These can be kept at room temperature for up to 3 days. These can also be frozen for up to 2 months.

Personal Note

I was making this dot cake one afternoon last week. It was going well and I was all on track to go to finish these, shoot them and then go to an afternoon tea at 4 o'clock in the city.

I was about to fill these cakes with buttercream, but then I got a message. It was from the high tea organiser asking what my ETA was. My eyes widened and quickly flicked back to the email and then I saw that the arrival time was 2pm not 4pm. Mr. NQN was in the shower and I opened the door and exclaimed in a panic "Our ETA was an hour ago!".

I wondered how I could've gotten this wrong. It's never happened before except once when I turned up on the wrong day for a midnight screening of the Blair Witch Project because I got the midnight date wrong and ever since then I've checked and double checked things.

I was hurriedly getting ready when I realise what happened. They had invited me when I was in Singapore and I had put the time into my calendar, but it was added under the local Singapore time which is two hours behind. Which is why it said that it was 4 o'clock and not 2 o'clock. We made it late – very late but not possibly so we still had time to enjoy the afternoon tea. One good thing about this was that I know that this cake keeps well because it kept until the next day! And having the soak helped as well so that was an additional tip to keep the cake moist.