To Dare, to dream ...

With thanks and deference to Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater for this recipe and to co-hosts Dolores of Culinary Curiosity, Alex of Blondie and Brownie and Jenny of Foray into Food.

Oh. my. gosh. I am so late with this post, and a big thank you to my good db friend Claire for reminding me of my blogging duties for November! I made this cake for my boyfriend's birthday on the 18th, so I totally lost track of time...excuses, excuses.

Moreover, due to the fact I seem to have lost my camara charger and had to borrow my wonderful housemate's, I only have shots of the end product. But the memories of the make remain - oh, the memories!

I actually managed to freak myself out slightly by reading all the stuff about "balancing acids", and needing to get an oxygen cylinder's-worth of air into the cake batter. In the end though, I went ahead and made the damn thing the old fashioned way, as I have none of the equipment with which to attempt to make a professional job of it!

But despite my amateur credentials, I was extremely pleased with how the sponge cake turned out. I would make the recipe again in a heartbeat. With the curmogeonly fan oven we have, I had to hover over the thing for the last twenty minutes to make sure it was cooked through and through, but apart from that, it was a dream.

The icing was a different story. No less easy to make, but I was wary of the amount of icing sugar required for this recipe, and as it turned out, every mouthful of the final product felt like death by sugar as a result. I really enjoyed making the icing, but I can't say the same thing about eating it.

All in all, a lovely looking cake, but not too easy to eat. In future I would make half the icing, with half the icing sugar...or maybe just the sponge cake!