Recipes

Three components cover nearly every birthday cake I make: a butter sponge, a stable buttercream and a quick fruit filling.

The 1:1:1:1 sponge

Weigh the eggs in their shells first, then match that weight in butter, caster sugar and self-raising flour. Four large eggs come to roughly 250 g and fill two 20 cm tins.

1. Beat soft butter and sugar for a full five minutes, until pale and almost white.
2. Add the eggs one at a time with a spoonful of the flour to stop the mix splitting.
3. Fold in the remaining flour with a pinch of salt and two tablespoons of milk.
4. Divide between lined tins by weight, level, and bake on the middle shelf.
5. Cool ten minutes in the tin, turn out, wrap while barely warm and chill overnight.

For chocolate, replace 20 g of flour per egg-weight batch with good cocoa and add an extra tablespoon of milk. For lemon, rub the zest of two lemons into the sugar before creaming.

Swiss meringue buttercream

Enough to fill and cover a two-layer 20 cm cake: 4 egg whites (about 140 g), 250 g caster sugar, 340 g unsalted butter at cool room temperature, a teaspoon of vanilla and a pinch of salt.

1. Whisk whites and sugar in a bowl over simmering water until the sugar dissolves and the mix reaches about 70 °C; rub a little between your fingers, it should not feel gritty.
2. Whip off the heat to a stiff, glossy meringue and keep going until the bowl feels neutral to the touch.
3. Add the butter a cube at a time. It will look curdled around the halfway point. Keep whipping; it comes together.
4. Finish with vanilla and salt. If it is soupy, chill the bowl for ten minutes and whip again.

Ten-minute berry filling

Simmer 300 g frozen raspberries with 60 g sugar and a squeeze of lemon for six minutes, stir in two teaspoons of cornflour slaked in cold water, cook one minute more and cool completely. Pipe a ring of buttercream around the edge of the layer before spreading the filling so it cannot escape.