Do you love to bake sweet treats for friends and family? Get some practise in ahead of the Easter festivities by following these top tips for creating perfect cakes and slices.

In pictures: Feast your eyes on this mouth-watering selection of easy cakes and slices

• Sticky situation

  To help spread crumb mixture into a pan to make a base for slices, simply cover with a sheet of plastic wrap or baking paper and press out with the palm of the hand until evenly distributed. This prevents the dough sticking to your hand.

• Paper cut

  To line a pan with baking paper, place the pan to be used on a sheet of baking paper and mark around the edges with a pencil. Measure the pan's height and allow this amount extra as an edge past the pencil marking. Cut out with scissors. Place pan over pencil markings again and use scissors to cut into corners, using a mitre cut or a square cut from each of the four sides. Line pan, folding the corner pieces one under the other and running a finger between the base and sides to make a crease so it fits neatly all around.

• Bake and roll

  Turn hot sponge out onto a clean tea towel lightly dusted with caster sugar and quickly peel off paper and trim edges. Roll up immediately in the tea towel, starting from a short edge. Leave to cool, unroll and spread over filling before rolling up again.

• Cream of the crop

  Cake recipes often start by beating butter and sugar until light and fluffy. It helps if you start with soft or room temperature butter. It should not be melted. Using an electric mixer, cream butter first and gradually beat in sugar until the mixture appears light in colour and texture, because of the incorporation of air. This creates the base for the cake batter, enabling the addition of other ingredients without the structure collapsing. This proper beating of the sugar into the batter results in a light, fine-grained cake.

• Know your ingredients

  Unless stated otherwise, use caster sugar in cake making. It dissolves more quickly and helps give cakes a lighter texture.

  Bicarbonate of soda and baking powder are sometimes added to cake batters with the flour. It is important that these rising agents are very fresh, and once added to the wet mixture, the batter should be baked immediately, or these agents won't work. Baking powder is a mixture of bicarbonate of soda (alkali) and cream of tartar (acid). When mixed with a wet ingredient, the two agents give off carbonic acid gas, which bubbles and becomes a leavening agent.

  Sour cream, buttermilk and yogurt work as an acid in recipes using bicarbonate of soda, helping the cake to rise and making for a wonderfully light texture.

Click here for our delicious collection of easy cakes and slices

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