In celebration of the messy cake...

This title may seem like a cop-out, making a shameless excuse for a cake gone wrong. On many levels, it probably is. I cannot deny the fact that I had every intention of making this cake look exactly like the one on Waitrose Kitchen magazine's front cover. It did not however, as you can see, turn out quite that way. My initial reaction was of one of serious irritation "you can't just scrape the cream off dad, the jam's already stained the sponge!" looking back, it's hardly worth whining about. Neatness is something you praise in a house, in a teenager's bedroom, but not in a cake. I have never yet heard somebody exclaim "ooh I just can't resist that carrot cake, it's so neat", even Waitrose's cover version has an enticingly off-perfect drizzle of jam down one side. When it comes to cake, we want an excess of filling, sticky jammy fingers and a creamy top lip. Neatness, in my opinion, often goes hand in hand with frugalness, definitely not something to cheer for at afternoon tea. I could have made this cake with a tiny smear of jam, a pathetically perfect (and painfully thin) circle of cream. In this instance, the top layer of cake would not, as happened in my case, have sat on the creamy filling like an elephant on a beanbag, oozing filling all around it, leaving little left in the place of the elephant's behind. But where's the fun in that? Where's the excess? There is no getting away from the fact that cake is a definite no-no on the diet front, so you might as well rebel in style.

Cream spillage aside, I have to say this this was one of the best cakes I've made. The (off-recipe)addition of ground almonds into the sponge gave an incredible moistness, yet the cake still remained beautifully light and fluffy. The combination of raspberries and blueberries alongside the tangy greek yoghurt gave a delicious balance of sharp and sweet... I'm supposed to be eating less of what I bake, but even I went back for seconds.

Now for the recipe itself. I will confess that there are some scientific reasons why my cake was such a blob. Those which, despite my tongue-in-cheek praise, you may wish to avoid if you're serving it to your new mother-in-law:

1. Don't put the fruit filling on top of the cream, it just creates too much extra weight and the cream can't hold it. Layer it with the fruit first, then the cream. The fruit then cream method was advised by the Waitrose recipe, but I unintentionally ignored it.
2. Don't assemble until everything is cool - I added the fruit filling when it was still a bit warm (impatience of youth!) which made the cream loose its firmness.
3. Don't add too much liquid to the filling - I defrosted my blueberries (see below for blueberry/cherry swap) but did not drain off the extra liquid that they pour out whilst defrosting. I also tried to ripple this liquid through the cream, making the it even thinner and thus losing its firmness and ability to hold up the cake.
4. Don't use too much greek yoghurt in the filling - I found the suggested alternative of half cream-half yoghurt made it a little too silky and slippery. The greek yogurt does give it a lovely flavour so I'd suggest using 150ml double cream and 100ml thick greek yoghurt (instead of 150ml).

It is probably unwise now to admit to tweaking the recipe at all. It would thus seem that these tweaks were my downfall. However, these small changes were primarily about flavour, so I personally believe that the reasons listed above are the culprits, rather than the following tweaks. In terms of the filling, this truly was just a flavour swap - instead of cherries and cherry jam, I used blueberries and raspberry jam. This is all down (indirectly) to my dad. At weekends, dad would do the fruit bowl for breakfast, and on one particular morning (probably whilst he was waiting for me to get out of the shower), he decided to get creative. We had fresh blueberries and raspberries, and he individually stuffed each raspberry with a single blueberry - and the combo stuck. The second change was that of ground almonds, I swapped 100g of the flour for 100g ground almonds. This really added to the almond flavour given by the essence, as well as giving the cake a lovely, slightly bakewell-like texture. Due to this recipe swap, I did add a tsp of baking powder because some of the raising agent would be lost in the reduction of self-raising flour (and ground almonds are a heavier than flour, so they need a little more encouragement).

Ingredients:

Serves 10 - 12

Cake

225g unsalted butter (although I actually used spread)

225g caster sugar

4 eggs

1tsp almond extract

3 tbsp milk

125g self raising flour

100g ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp toasted, flaked almonds

Filling

250g frozen blueberries, defrosted  - and drain off all but a couple of tsp of the juice (you can set this aside, reduce it further on the hob, then use to drizzle over your breakfast yoghurt)

200g raspberry jam

150ml double cream

100ml thick greek yoghurt

2 tbsp icing sugar (I would advise adding this extra tbsp - to the 1 tbsp suggested by Waitrose - as the addition of yogurt makes it a bit loose so it needs a little extra stability)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees c and butter and line two 20cm sandwich tins.
2. Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time (beating in between each addition).
3. Beat in the almond extract and milk.
4. Fold in the sieved flour, ground almonds and baking powder.
5. Pour into the tins and scatter one with the toasted almonds.
6. Cook for 25 mins until golden and risen.
7. Whilst they're cooking, heat the defrosted blueberries with the raspberry jam for a couple of minutes on the hob until syrupy. Set aside to cool.
8. Once cooked, remove the cakes from the oven and leave to cool in their tins for 5 mins before turning out.
9. Once the the fruit mix and the cakes are cool, whip the cream and icing sugar to soft peaks, then fold in the yogurt.
10. Place the plain cake on a serving plate, top with the fruit, then the cream, then the almond topped sponge. Dust with icing sugar before serving.