As it was Mother’s Day I thought why not make a cake to share with my family. After all, if I didn’t have my husband, son and daughter then I wouldn’t be a mother, obviously!   Usually every Mother’s Day I get flowers and breakfast in bed but this year was different.  This year my hubby was away with work so I had to get up early to help my daughter with her horse and to walk our dog.  Breakfast in bed was out of the question. Instead we came back to Pain au chocolat (courtesy of Waitrose bakery), Smoothies and coffee for me. Later on I was presented with a Cadburys’ Chocolate Mini Egg Easter egg from my son (which he ended up eating half of!!) as well as some gorgeous yellow tulips. I also got some beauty therapy vouchers for the Turkish Baths in Harrogate. This was totally unexpected from my daughter who had saved up her allowance to treat me.  So, I wanted to thank my lovely family in my usual way- making them cakes!

I love Victoria Sponges laced with jam and cream and was keen to try out a recipe of a cake I had tried several weeks before at the BBC Look North shooting with the Clandestine Cake Club.  Helen Jones who I know via Twitter and her blog BakingAitch had made her delicious Featherlight Cake for the shooting as her mother Susan Jones (aka Evie’s Gran) was taking part.  Helen has two cakes featured in the Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook, the Featherlight Cake and also the delicious Tia Maria and Marscapone Cake which is heaven on a plate.

The Featherlight sponge is a butter free cake but in the introduction it states that “Helen suggests air should be listed as one of the ingredients!”  I was keen to try this as I had never made a whisked sponge before in this way.

As I was whisking the egg whites up my hand mixer decided to pack in.  I don’t have much luck with handmixers at the moment. They don’t last very long with me and this one was no exception.  I could feel the mixer getting hotter and hotter and then it just stopped.  In the end I had to use the hand method. At least it might help me with my bingo wings! I was glad when I had got the flour folded in and the cake straight into the oven.

The cakes did not take long to bake, only about 15 minutes.  They were light and springy and I left them to cool on a wire rack while I tried my hardest to whip up some cream by hand.  This took absolutely ages and I had to stop a couple of times as my arms were aching.

The cake was sandwiched together with some strawberry jam and the whipped cream.  There was some left over so instead of dusting the top with icing sugar I decided to pipe swirls of cream on top and finish off with some freeze dried strawberries I had found in Waitrose the day before.  They looked very pretty.

As my hubby wasn’t going to be home until the afternoon we ended up eating our cake at 5pm in the evening after some meatballs and pasta.  It was just light and airy as Helen said it would be.

By Tuesday all the cake had gone! It was extremely popular in our house and my son has asked for me to make it again. Helen suggests lemon curd as a filling instead of jam which sounds delicious and just perfect for Easter if you don’t want chocolate or Simnel Cake.

Happy Baking!

Love Sam xx