A slice of happiness

I don’t know about you but I was completely carried away by the celebrations on friday.

It seemed like we were celebrating so much more than a Royal Wedding, it felt like we were celebrating marriage, partnership, friendship and commitment and they managed to make it feel so personal and intimate that I felt like I had been to a wedding myself that day. I had taken stock of the promises I made all those years ago and double checked that I was still being true to them. Just like I do whenever I’m in the congregation in a church at the wedding of a close friend.

This feeling of nostalgia and romance was obviously helped on by the fantastic hospitality of the friends we were with for lunch on the day and I share my contribution towards pudding here with you – a massive Union Jack cake, that was so spookily easy to make that I thought I would let you in on the secret.

First you need to make a large slab of Victoria Sponge cake. Select the right sized roasting tin – mine was about 25cm by 17cm and about 4cm deep. I ripped off a piece of greasproof paper from the roll and pushed it into the tin, scrunching the corners in (I was in a hurry but it didn’t matter). I reckoned I needed about 5 eggs worth of mixture which meant equal quantities of everything else (marg, sugar, self raising flour). I simply cracked the 5 eggs into a jug, mixed them up and weighed them. Then I measured the same quantity of Stork margarine (softened) into my kitchenaid bowl with some golden caster sugar and I beat them hard until light and fluffy before adding some of the egg mixture and a few tablespoons of self raising flour to stop the mixture from curdling. Adding the rest of the egg, I then folded in the rest of the flour with a teaspoon of baking powder for good measure. Checking for a reluctant dropping consistency (it was almost running off my spatula), I poured the mixture into my tin and cooked it at 170 degrees C for about 40 mins but I kept checking for a clean skewer from about 30 mins as I really didn’t want it over done. I left it to cool completely (in fact, I froze it as I was actually going to London to work for two days and I was doing this in the middle of the night on tuesday!)

Returning from London on thursday night, to a defrosted cake (thank you Julie), I embarked on my icing. Which was simply 200g softened unsalted butter beaten to within an inch of its life to which I added 400g of icing sugar, also beaten (but gradually so that the kitchen doesn’t get trashed in the process). Divide the mixture into 3 separate bowls and colour red and blue leaving the plain as your ‘white’.

Then I scribbled a flag on a piece of paper so that I didn’t go wrong – never a bad idea when piping I find, you would be amazed at how confused one can get with a piping bag in hand. Starting with the red, I piped using a fat round nozzle the red lines but I didn’t push the icing flat, I left it as smooth chunky ridges. Then I did the same with the blue icing – smaller round nozzle this time, creating 8 blue triangles. Finally I used a large star nozzle for the white lines as I knew they would be visible and needed to look confident and glamorous. Throughout all of this I resisted the temptation to lick my fingers – not just for hygiene reasons but because it is very sickly sweet if you eat too much icing I find.

Finally I placed raspberries along all my red lines and blueberries on all the blue triangles.

It was a knock out success, the Stork margarine made all the difference to a light fluffy cake and the fruit cut through all that butter icing. Have a try, its worth it!

PS – for a much more detailed way to make a good Victoria Sponge read one of my earlier blogs!

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