What I Ate Today

I wanted to make a very very quick birthday cake – we were on holiday and time was of the essence and the local shop not very big.  I wanted to keep it real simple – so sponge cake.  But how to make it just a bit more exciting than a Victoria sponge?  I opted for fresh raspberries and rather than just whipped cream, a blend of mascarpone and fromage frais (inspired by a recipe for passion fruit cake by good old Delia).

 Ingredients

For the Cake:

• 175g Self Raising Flour
• 175g Butter
• 175g Caster Sugar
• 3 Large Eggs
• 1/2 tspn Vanilla Extract
• 1 tspn Baking Powder

For the Filling:

• 250g Raspberries
• 250g Mascarpone
• 250g Fromage Frais
• 1 dessert spoon Caster Sugar
• 1 tspn Vanilla Extract
• 4 tbspn Raspberry Jam
• Icing Sugar

Method

1. Sieve the flour and baking powder into a bowl.  Add the butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla extract and mix until smooth
2. Split between two sandwich tins and bake for 30mins at 170°C.  I used baking paper to line the tins.
3. Mix mascarpone, fromage frais, caster sugar and vanilla extract.
4. Spread the half the jam and half the mascarpone mixture onto each sponge
5. Place Raspberries  (as artistically as you like)
6. Dust with icing sugar
   

This cake was really very quick indeed and I thought it was a good variation on a classic.  I used quantities for the sponge mix as recommended by my friend Kate with whom I’ve made many sponge cakes over the years at university and beyond.  The mascarpone/fromage frais mix was an idea from Delia – the quantities I used were actually those which the ingredients came in – just one tub of each.  We had some lovely little sparklers  instead of candles; thankfully the smoke alarm didn’t mind!  In total, it took less than an hour from start to finish.