Happy 69th Birthday Nanny!

Tomorrow is my lovely Nanny's 69th birthday, so today I am spending the afternoon making her a cake. My friend Ellie made her boyfriend the 'Birthday Angel Smartie Cake' from Annie Bell's Gorgeous Cakes for his 22nd back in May, and it was lovely, plus my Nanny loves Smarties, so it seemed a perfect fit. She's also not one for fancy ingredients or decoration, so the simplicity of this will appeal to her.

The ingredients for the sponge are not quite your usual Victoria Sponge components: egg whites, sea salt (a minuscule amount obviously) cream of tartar (which I still associate with play-doh, not food!) icing sugar and plain flour. The mixture feels more like macaron batter than cake batter, but it bakes beautifully, here's one of the layers cooling nicely:

The nice thing about this sponge (for me anyway) is that it's dairy free, so by adding a dairy free filling/icing, it's another one for the roast dinner night repertoire!


On to the filling...


My Nanny is good with dairy, so I'm going to stick to the suggestion in the book this time, a mascarpone and jam filling, with cream cheese icing and plenty of Smarties - I'm excited!


The mascarpone and jam mixture tasted good, but was a little grey. This was quickly remedied with a little pink colouring gel, and the cream cheese icing was delicious - my sister quite literally licked the bowl! I decided to go for rustic peaks rather than get it smooth, much easier and a better backdrop for Smarties I feel! 


All assembled it looked and tasted lovely - nice and simple, and my Nanny was very pleased! I really like this sponge recipe, it gives a really light cake, but not so light that it crumbles away at the slightest touch. I will definitely be using it more, and I think I might try it for cupcakes next...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NANNY MURIEL

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