recipe for a small cake

[PamNY]

Are you giving the cake in the tin as part of the gift, or is the decoration meant to be atop the cake when it is removed from the pan?

If the former, I have a chocolate nut torte recipe that fits in a single layer round cake pan. It is yummy, but might be sort of hard to remove from a tin with high sides. It needs to be cut in small wedges like a pie. Since it doesn't have a leavening agent, it won't rise as a normal cake does.

I also have a single-layer carrot cake and orange date-nut cake, but I believe they go in square pans (I'm assuming your tin is round).

I can check the Rose Levy Birnbaum Cake Bible. Rose knows everything.