Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi debibon

I would be inclined to use the same quantity of butter as for the oil. I’ve tried to look this up for you and  everything I read seems to suggest that you can just make a straight swap. I’m not so sure of that though, so with caution I suggest you bake an 8″ cake and substitute the oil with the same amount of butter. It makes a difference to the texture of the cake if you use creaming method, so if you want it to be like Paul’s cake,  you should melt the butter in exactly the same way. For an 8″ cake you’d need 35g of butter melted so it isn’t a great deal. Have a go, then let us all know.

I’d do it myself but I’m laid up with a bad back and can’t do much at the moment!

Hi debibon,

Paul normailly recommends a sponge recipe which uses oil rather than butter, as it is nice and moist, and less likely to crumble when carved.

There’s a chocolate cake recipe like this in the free/beginners online course section here: http://www.cakeflix.com/online-cake-decorating-courses/free/moist-chocolate-recipe

The other beauty of using oil based sponges for novelty cakes is they can stay moist for longer, which is handy with novelty cakes as you don’t always want to cut up the creation right away! In my case i’ve kept cakes as long as possible to let all my friends and family see them.

Hope this helps!

Paula

Thankyou paula very interesting and informative x

How would you adapt this oil based choc recipe to make it plain

I am not too sure about that debibon. Would maybe be worth posting a new question to find that out as some other members of the Q&A may have tried it. Good luck! 🙂

Will do thanks for your help and time maideithlove x

You’re welcome, your results will help other people who want to do the same, so thank you too! x