Mrs P stars in her own version of The Great British Bake Off

With Ava’s 4th birthday now only 2 sleeps away, I have competed in my annual version of The Great British Bake Off. Ok so Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood are hardly likely to pay a visit to my kitchen but the pressure of having ‘the cake’ on show for the scrutiny of all my Mummy friends at Ava’s 4 th birthday party this Sunday is surely on par. For those of you attending said party, as I know quite a large proportion of my current readership will be there, I really don’t take cake making that seriously. As a Stay-at-home Mum, I personally don’t feel justified in buying a cake or paying for someone else to make one but I certainly don’t judge those that do. I’ll let you into a little secret though – I have bought the fairy cakes so I’ll let Ava loose on the decoration of these!

So here is the finished article and I think it’s my best one yet!

I must say a couple of thank yous for this effort…

1. Thank you to Andrea of Andrea’s Celebration Cakes for sending through the recipe for the Madeira cake. It was a little cheeky to ask for a recipe but a friend and I are doing a cake decorating course with Andrea in a few weeks time which I will no doubt report on here.

2. Thanks to my husband Andy for saving me from a cream and jam disaster. Benjamin’s 1st birthday cake lacked jam so I decided that I would spread jam over both halves, only to discover that I then couldn’t spread the cream! Jam scrapped off and a sliver taken off the end of the cake with a sharp knife rescued the situation.

3. Thank you to my mother-in-law Nadine for helping me to lay the royal icing on the cake and for suggesting the twisted trim around the bottom which I think really finishes off the cake nicely.

If you’re interested in the recipe for the cake and a few helpful hints for cake making that have been passed onto me, then please read on…

Madeira Sponge Cake (7inch square tin/8 inch round tin)
12 oz Self Raising Flour
10 oz Caster Sugar
10 oz Butter (I used Stork as recommended on my cupcake decorating class)
5 medium eggs
2 tbsp milk

Preheat oven to 150°C
Sift flour into bowl and add all other ingredients
Using a mixer, beat for 1 minute
Spoon mixture into a tin 3/4 full
Scoop some of the middle and place it round the edges

A couple of other useful hints I have picked up are:
Place a bowl of water at the bottom of the oven to make the cake more moist.
Add a 1/4 teaspoon of glycerine per egg, also to increase the moisture content.
Grease the baking tin before laying baking patchment in the tin.
Use a cocktail stick and dip in a small amount of paste to colour the royal icing. The more dips, the deeper the colour.

Baking time: 1hr 10mins

I filled the cake with strawberry jam and buttercream (4 oz butter and 8 oz icing sugar)