Try these easy picnic cakes... simple to make and great
to make ahead for your picnic.
Cakes are
almost "a must" at a picnic and you will be thrilled to throw your
easy picnic cake together, pop it in the oven... then enjoy the delicious wafts
of baking cake coming from the kitchen while you prepare other food and gather things for your picnic.
Cakes ... find recipes below
- Chocolate cake... made with black beans and dates
- A very special sponge cake... from my Mum
- Butterfly cakes... a bit of fun!
- An easy banana cake... an old family favorite that my family has often made
- More to come!
So let's
start with this chocolate cake...
without flour
or sugar, it's an easy picnic cake made with the sweetness of dates...
It is a cake with dates!
Make a lovely moist chocolate cake... for 10-12 people.
You will need to...
- Begin by heating oven to 180C ( 160 fan forced)
- Grease a deep 20cm round spring form cake tin. Line base with grease proof paper.
Gather your ingredients for this easy picnic cake ...
- 1x400g tin black beans... drained and rinsed well
- 15 soft fresh dates, pitted and roughly chopped... use lovely moist dates, not the hard dry variety! If you do have dry dates, just soak them in boiling water, drain and use.
- 1tabspn Vanilla extract
- 6 eggs
- 2 tabspns strong black coffee
- 150g coconut oil
- 60gm cocoa powder… ¾ cup
- ½ teaspoon carb. soda
- 1 teaspn baking powder
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Pinch salt
- Approximately 150 g fresh fruit… plums or, pears, apricots or, strawberries and blueberries or,
pitted cherries, raspberries, bananas... your choice!
Method....
- Beat... beans, dates, vanilla, 3 eggs and coconut oil all together in a food processor, until finely chopped and smooth.
- Add remaining ingredients and beat together. It will look quite moist.

- Pour into spring form cake tin lined with grease proof paper.
- Place
your chosen fresh fruit on top of the cake and push gently into the
mixture. Plums, sliced, were used for this easy picnic cake. Our trees
were laden with fruit and I just "had" to use them... and they were
delicious... but you can use your favorite fruit.
- ... So, use approximately 150 g fresh fruit… plums or, pears, apricots, peaches or, strawberries and blueberries,
pitted cherries or, raspberries, bananas, apples... your choice!
- Pop into the oven... 180C
( 160 fan forced) and cook for about 30min, or more if still very
moist. Sometimes, depending on the fruit, it can be 10min or more, even
longer!
- It will be very moist.
- The cake finished cooked cake looks cracked on the top, but this is the cooked plums, soft and delicious!
- Let cake stand in tin for 10 min, at least, after removing from oven and before turning out onto cooling rack.
To decorate this easy picnic cake...
- You can use your favorite fresh fruit. I have used mine here... mixed
berries, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries... just scatter
across the top of the cake.
- Then scatter clean edible flowers amongst the fruit. Please make sure they are edible clean flowers, not sprayed with poisons!
- I
took these to the picnic on a little plate, with a small amount of
water to keep them fresh... and covered them in biodegradable plastic film.
Could be in a reusable plastic container too.
- The berries and
flowers and strawberry leaves, were put on the cake at the picnic... it
only takes a couple of seconds to do this.
- Give a light sprinkle of icing sugar if you wish... it does look good and adds a little sweetness.
A good dollop of thickened cream... or yogurt... is excellent with this easy picnic cake!
TOP TIPS... other suggestions on how to use this mixture for an easy picnic cake.
- This recipe is also brilliant in a log tin... easier to cut at the picnic and can still look as stunning.
- It
can also be divided into a 10-12 muffin tin well buttered, for
individual little cakes. They will take less time to cook... 15 to 20
min. Decorate too!
- This cake can be used as a base for a trifle too. We made individual trifles to take to a last minute picnic for two... delish!
Now, a treat for you, another easy picnic cake... the very best, easy sponge cake recipe!
This is the sponge cake recipe used by my Mother, Nance.
Nance used this easy sponge cake recipe for many, many picnics in the bush.
It wasn't a proper picnic if we didn't have a sponge, or lovely fruit cake, made by my Mum.
Boil the billy for tea (as shown on the "My Story " page) and... bring out the sponge cake!
This easy sponge cake recipe was also very popular for trading tables...
to
raise money for our school and many other charities.
In fact, the cakes
were often sold before hitting the trading table!
Nance was famous for
her light, moist , delicious sponge cakes.... the best ever!
Note... The sponge shown here is a small one, using half the mixture only...
and the remaining sponge cake mixture was used to make butterfly cakes... below.
Sponge Cake recipe...
this will make two sponges to sandwich together... or for you to make butterfly cakes.
For easy picnic cake you will need...
- 4-5 eggs (depending on their size)
- 1 cup castor sugar
- 2 teaspoons butter
- 3 tablespoons milk
- 3/4 cup self raising flour
- Top the cup up with cornflour... 1/4 cup
- A little extra butter and cornflour for greasing and lining tins
- Pinch salt
Method....
- Grease 2 x 8" sponge cake tins with warmed butter
- Sprinkle with cornflour and tap over the tin and tip off excess flour
- In a large cake mixing bowl... Sift flour together, three times... to aerate and make your sponge light
- Heat butter and milk together, put aside
- Separate eggs
- Beat whites with a pinch of salt until soft but firm
- Add sugar and beat until it dissolves... not too stiff
- Add egg yolks and beat until creamy yellow
- Sift flour... already sifted 3 times... into beaten eggs... fold together
- Then fold in cooled milk and melted butter... don't over mix, just fold together until just mixed.
- Pour half mixture into each sponge tin
- Cook at 350-375c for 20 min
To make a chocolate or coffee sponge...
Leave out one tablespoon SR Flour and add 1 heaped tablespoon cocoa, or coffee, instead.
When sponges are flavored with chocolate, or coffee, then butter icing with a touch of cocoa or coffee is excellent... often this is the best way to decorate when going out on a hot day for
a picnic.
Nance often used Passionfruit in her icing... and we loved it!
How to make butterfly cakes...
Made from the mixture used in the easy sponge cake recipe.
If you are taking children to the
picnic, or perhaps someone has a birthday...
or you just want to have a
bit of fun... this is what to make!
There
are different butterfly cake ideas... they can be put into patty pans, can be big, or smallish like these.
You will need to...
- Make the sponge cake mixture above.
- Grease and flour patty tins ready to fill with sponge mixture.
- Set oven to 350-375C and bake for 12-15 minutes.
- They will be cooked when golden brown .... and you can gently push your fingers onto top of cakes and cakes spring back when your fingers are taken away... Just as you did for the sponge.
- Turn out onto cooling racks.
- Use half of small cakes for wings. Cut into half.
- Top one whole small cake with jam and dollop of cream.
- Place the thick side of cakes cut in halves, together, to form wings.
- Sprinkle with icing sugar.
The Best Banana
Cake recipe... an easy picnic cake… I’ve found it! Hooray!
As you can
see from this photo, this is one of our very old favorites... an easy picnic cake recipe!
We have moved house and some recipes (my old favorites,
of course) went AWOL, so it is so exciting to find these old favorites… recipes
my kids and I have made many times! As you can see the original copy for
Lib's Banana Cake has been extremely well used! Thankfully I had written a new copy
some time ago. It came originally from a friend many years ago and is really very easy to
make.
It is an almost fool proof
recipe, but recently I did make a big mistake which I will share with you. It’s
hard to believe that after all these years of making it that I could make such
a mistake.
This cake has been baked for many picnics!
To make
this very easy Banana Cake…
You will need…
- 60gm (2oz) butter
- 90gm (3oz) sugar
- 2 bananas… old soft bananas!
- 1 egg
- 125gm (4oz) self raising flour
- 15 soft dates
- ¼ teaspoon Baking Soda
- 2 tabs cold
water
To Put together....
- Melt butter
- In blender, or food processor... add butter, sugar, egg and soft bananas and dates... beat well.
- Pour into a
bowl and sift flour on top of the beaten mixture.
- Stir all together.
- Last of all, add Baking Powder…
dissolved in water... stir well.
- Bake for
30min in Moderate oven 175C (350F)
- A rectangular log tin works well for a cake going to a picnic. This makes it easy to cut slices to be shared around.
TOP
TIPS….
The mistake
I made recently was to use fresh hard bananas. I was in a hurry and
couldn’t find old bananas, so thought fresh bananas would be fine… BIG Mistake!
- You need to
use old soft bananas for this cake. Usually, I freeze the bananas which have
ripened too much to eat while fresh. When I have enough in the freezer, that’s
when I make a cake!
The cake I
made was quite dry and hard… OK to eat but nothing like the moist delicious
cake I usually make.
It was good
to make the mistake before showing you this old favorite!
- Like the
chocolate cake above it is also a good recipe to make in a log cake tin, or in a
muffin pan.
Check picnic dessert ideas for more suggestions...
Back to Top
Leap Home... Fill the baskets!