Cake baking to me is a great stressbuster and it really helps with my anxiety. It brings me back into the moment and has been a huge help to get me through all the worries brought about by this coronavirus pandemic. I was feeling a bit off it on Monday. I know I am far from alone though. I always feel anxious and stressed on a Monday going to the supermarket. I missed about four things off the shopping list. Only one of them was important: some dishwasher tablets. I hadn’t realised we were down to the last one when I opened the pouch in the cupboard. But I was still made to feel like a senile old bat for forgetting them!

At the beginnning of lockdown I had an order from Sugar and Crumbs. I love their flavoured icing sugars and there were several flavours I’d yet to try. One of the flavours I had bought previously and liked was their Mermaid one (what are mermaids meant to taste like?!) It must mean that the flavour is inspired by mermaids as the icing sugar is actually blueberry and white chocolate. I love both blueberries and white chocolate so I was thinking what bake I could come up with which incorporated this flavour into it. Even more so, could I come up with a recipe?

I didn’t come up with my own recipe but instead adapted an old favourite recipe. It comes from the fantastic John Whaite (Bake Off winner from Season 3 in 2012). It’s originally his Raspberry and White Chocolate Melting Cake which was featured in BBC Good Food Magazine as well as in John’s first book, the fabulous John Whaite Bakes.

Here is the original recipe; https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/johns-white-chocolate-raspberry-cake

I have made the original cake before and it is divine! The filling is a white chocolate ganache but I changed the filling and added a topping instead. This was mainly so I could use the icing sugar and also because I didn’t have enough white chocolate for both the cake and the filling. Not only that, I didn’t have cream in.

In place of the raspberries in the cake I substituted the same weight of blueberries. For the filling I spread one cake with some St Dalfour Blueberry Preserve left over from a hamper I had won before Christmas. I made up some buttercream using the Sugar and Crumbs icing sugar and a splash of food colouring to turn it lilac. I then assembled the cake. I added some stars and swirls to the top of the cake and finished it with whole blueberries and a sprinkling of some white chocolate strands.

Althought the cake looked beautiful, I personally found the buttercream far too sweet and sickly for my taste. I think I might have to rethink my quantities next time.

Happy Baking!

Love Sam xx