1st. Birthday cake

My daughter had birthday on friday, a normal working day even that it was Easter. Still I wanted to make a small cake for her (and for us), her party will be on sunday then the we will have the bigger cake. So I prepared a small Madeira sponge with my own twist and then I decorated with marzipan.

The ingredients you need for this sponge are:

• 2 round tins about 18 cm each, greased and on the bottom lined with baking paper
• 250 gr. flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 175 gr. soft unsalted butter
• A pinch of salt
• 175 gr. caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• The zest and juice of half orange (the original is with lemon, but I thought orange will be sweeter and it was perfect!)

In a bowl put the butter and using a mixer beat for about 2 minutes, when starts getting lighter and creamier add the sugar, mix for another 5 to 10 minutes until is very light and fluffy. Slowly add the eggs one by one, mixing every time. With the last egg add the baking powder and a bit of flour. After that the orange zest and lemon, mix well and the rest of the flour. Mix until all the flour is well combined. Divided into the 2 tins and bake in a 170 degrees preheated oven for about 45 minutes, until has a nice golden brown color. Then leave to cool down completely in a wire rack and then you can take out of the tins and decorate.

My decoration, normally for such a cake you can make buttercream, but I wanted to have a bit healthier, so taking one of the sponges and cover the top part with mascarpone and strawberry jam. Then take the other sponge and put on top of this one, cover the top again with a small layer of mascarpone, this is just to make sure you the marzipan with stick in the cake. The decoration you can just do how you wanted, just let your imagination goes!