Bake Fest Friday & My Mum

I am finding myself baking more and more towards the end of each week nowadays. Traditionally you are meant to have fish on a Friday but my household is finding itself with a fridge full of cakes to consume over the weekend. This is great. I am far more prone to something sweet at the end of a long week than baked Salmon. I'll have the Salmon on Monday as penance!

This Sunday we celebrate Mothering Sunday in Great Britain. I am not going to be with my mum on that day as LBH and I are traveling so I felt the need to send her a little something. That something is this.......

Cranberry & Lemon Springtime Cake. (forgive the bad piping of the lettering please!)

Pre-heat your oven to 170 degrees centigrade.

Take 6oz of butter, 6 oz of caster (superfine) sugar, 3 eggs, 8 oz of self raising flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, grated rind of 1 lemon, 4 oz of dried cranberries and pop them into your food processor with the blade attachment. Whiz, whiz and then whiz some more. Making the mixture light and fluffy and chopping the cranberries into tiny speckles in the process. This is a much more desirable state for the cranberry to be in if it's going into a sponge cake.

Pour the mixture into two 8 inch cake tins and place in the oven for approximately 50 mins.

When they are baked right through and golden in colour take the tins out of the oven and transfer the cakes to a wire cooling rack. When they are cool you can begin to decorate. I spread lashings of Strawberry jam on to one of the sponges, placed the other on top to make a jam sandwich cake and then made some vanilla frosting for the top. After much trial and error I manged to get my frosting to a beautiful duck egg blue colour although I doubt very much if I will ever manage it again!

Butter-cream Frosting.
Whiz 8 oz of icing sugar, 1 oz of butter (at room temperature), 1 teaspoon of a good quality pure Vanilla extract and two to three tablespoons of milk together using the blade attachment on your food processor. The lighter you are able to get the frosting the better but don't mistake lightness for it being too runny. You don't want runny! If it's too drippy keep adding the icing sugar.

Happy Mothers Day to mums across the land. Don't forget to let me know if your babies make this for you. I'll be sure to tell you what my mum thought of hers.

Comments

[Jenn M.]

Thanks so much! What a lovely cake. I am going to make this on Mom's day. =)

Jenn

[carolyn]

A weekend's worth of cakes sounds wonderful to me, can I come and stay?

[Julia]

Oh that's so lovely. I love the 'Mummy' on the cake, it's so sweet and makes me go 'awwww'.

I was thinking of baking my mum a cake too!

[writershand]

What a lovely cake Cherry. I'm sure your mum will appreciate it even though you are travelling this week end. What a great girl you are, remembering LBH's mum as well as your own. These are the little things that make a long lasting marriage. Thought for the other person.Have a truly Wonderful weekend. lol

[clarice]

Mothering Sunday what a lovely name. Yummy cake I like the lemon/cranberry combo. Have a lovely Sunday. Clarice