Being all patriotic for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and made a cake...

I know it's a little late, but I still thought I'd post my Union Jack cake for you all to have a go at next time there is a Royal/British/Olympic occasion. It's basically a Victoria sponge cake (carrying on with the monarchy theme), I'll write the recipe and method below, but it's pretty simple really.


INGREDIENTS:
250g - Caster sugar
250g - SR Flour
250g - Butter/Margarine
1 tbsp - Vanilla essence
4 - large eggs


METHOD for making the cake: pre-heat the oven to 180c

1. Cream the caster sugar and margarine together until fluffy
2. Add the vanilla essence and half the eggs and sieve in half of the flour and then mix together
3. Add the remaining eggs and flour into the mixing bowl, until the mixture is creamy with no lumps
4. Grease the tins with margarine and tin foil or line your tins with grease proof paper
5. If you have 2 circular baking tins then pour an equal amount of the mixture into each tin. If you don't have 2, fill one half way and then once cooked re-fill with the remaining mixture
5. Place the baking tins into the oven and cook at 18c for 20ish minutes or until golden brown
6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before decorating

It's a pretty simple cake to make really and it should be nice and light and fluffy when you come to eat it later. I'm now going to tell you how I decorated the cake.

INGREDIENTS:
Raspberry Jam
Raspberries
Blueberries
Butter cream:
1 tbsp of milk
115g margarine/butter
50g icing sugar


METHOD: decorating the cake
1. Once the cakes come out of the oven, they may have a slightly raised top, trip the excess off the top of the cake to allow the cake to balance properly.
2. For the bottom layer keep the trimmed side of the cake facing upwards and spread a layer of raspberry jam onto it
3. For the top layer, spread a layer of jam onto the trimmed side of the cake and then place this side of the cake downwards (so the top of the cake should be the bottom of the cake when it comes out of the cake tin). This might seem confusing but it should make the cake look prettier
4. Then mix the milk, margarine and icing sugar together until the butter cream is well mixed and relatively thin with no lumps of icing sugar
5. Using a palette knife (or any other flat kitchen utencil) smooth the buttercream onto the top of the cake (you should have just enough to cover the whole top of the cake with a thick layer)
6. Then cut the raspberries in half to make it easier to place on the cake
7. The rest is pretty self explanatory, try using your blueberries and raspberries to create a Uninon Jack pattern (basically a cross with two diagonal lines for the raspberries, and fill the gaps with triangles of blueberries).

Hope all you people who read the blog that are from Britain had a great Jubilee weekend but also, if you are reading from another country, have a go at this cake anyway but use various different fruits to create your countries flag! :-) If you have a go at making this cake or have any questions about how to achieve it, don't hesitate to ask me a question !