My Birthday Cake

Yesterday was my birthday, even that I was not planning to celebrate (this year has been a bit difficult year for me), my husband told me that his parents were planning to come and also because my mother is now here visiting us, I decided to make a cake, why not? And it did work again very good, it was really delicious! On wednesday afternoon I already baked the sponge cake (2) and that way yesterday I only had to do the buttercream and the marzipan decorations, the decoration I did together with my husband he is a bit more creative than me, actually he made that beautiful girl silhouette.

There are many ways to prepare a sponge cake, I use the recipe of the English Victoria Sandwich Cake, I think is so good and then decorated with marzipan is even better.

For the sponges you need: 175 gr. soft butter, 3 eggs, 175 gr. caster sugar, 175 self-rising flour, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 tablespoon milk.

Put the butter and the sugar in a bowl and mix until is very creamy and light, I use normally my electric mixer. Then beat the eggs together with the vanilla and add slowly to the butter mix. Add the sifted flour and the milk very carefully, using a spoon to fold. I use 2 tins (20.5 cm), divided the mixture into the 2 tins and in a 170 degrees preheated oven, bake for about 25 minutes, until they are light golden brown. When ready carefully take them out of the tins and leave to cool down completely in a wire rack.

For the buttercream you just need to mix very 250 gr. soft butter with 250 gr. icing sugar until they are very very creamy and ready to spread in the cake.

How do you make the cake? In one of the sponges you spread first a good layer of buttercream, then spread a good layer of jam, I use strawberry jam but any other jam will also be good. Take the other sponge and put on top pressing a bit, just enough to stick to the jam. Then cover the hole cake with the rest of the buttercream, actually you might have some left over, but you can keep in the refrigerator for 1 week. When is done it’s time to decorate with the marzipan, you can make your own design, but what you do use a good quality marzipan, be careful because not all marzipan that see on the shops is good!

Well that was, the cake was absolutely delicious!