St Clement's Cake

Yesterday was my Mother-In-Laws birthday. As I said in my previous post, Sunday was the day that the whole family gathered to celebrate. Now in my book a birthday just isn't a birthday until there is a cake thrown in for good measure. MIL is a HUGE St Clement's fan and last year I made her a St Clement's Cake, a Hairy Bikers recipe so you can imagine how bad it is for your hips but not so tough on the taste buds!

Last year I followed the instructions to a tee and ended up with two very thick sponge cakes sandwiched with a thick layer of butter icing and topped off with even more butter icing. There were no complaints on the taste but the presentation wasn't that fantastic, it just didn't look especially 'finished'. So this year I sliced each sponge in half and then used thinner layers of the butter icing to sandwich them altogether. Not quite so sure that the presentation was improved any but it certainly didn't effect the taste so it was declared a winner again.

St Clement's Cake

500g unsalted butter, softened

400g caster sugar

8 eggs

1 tsp vanilla bean paste

2 heaped tsp baking powder

100g ground almonds

560g plain flour

Juice of a lemon

Zest of 2 lemons

3 tbsp orange juice

1 tsp orange extract

For the Topping

250g unsalted butter, softened

500g icing sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste

1 dessert spoon hot water

Zest of a lemon

2 tsp lemon juice

Zest of an orange

1 tsp orange extract

Cream together the butter and the sugar until it goes white (very important top tip). Beat in the vanilla bean paste and the eggs one by one.

In a separate bowl blend together the flour, almonds, salt and baking powder then fold into the butter and sugar mixture. This is the basic cake mix.

Divide the cake mixture evenly into two bowls.

In the first bowl - lets make the lemon cake. To the cake mix add the juice of one lemon and the zest of two lemons.

In the second bowl - let's make the orange cake. To the cake mix add the orange juice, orange extract and the zest of an orange.

Butter the two cake tins and line with silicon baking parchment. Pour the cake mixtures into the two cake tins.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 40 mins. To test whether the cake is cooked test by pushing a metal skewer into the centre of the cake and if the skewer comes out clean then the cake is cooked.

Leave to cool in the tins.

Meanwhile, make the toppings. Cream together the butter, icing sugar and hot water and fold in the vanilla bean paste.

Divide the mixture equally into two separate bowls.

To the first bowl add the lemon zest and the lemon juice mix thoroughly and this makes the lemon butter icing.

To the other bowl add the orange zest and the orange juice mix thoroughly and this is the orange butter icing.

Cut the top off the lemon cake until it is level then spread generously with the lemon butter icing.

Sandwich the orange sponge on top of this. Coat the top of the cake with the orange butter icing.

Arrange decorations on top. (The Hairy Bikers used crystallised fruit, I used jelly sweets!!)

Serves lots of people

Now I am the first to admit that my attention was not fully on the cake by the time it came to he slicing and decorating ... those rotten scones were taking up far too much of my time. Its not an excuse, just the truth, but the end result is a cake that I am not all that proud of. In fact if this had been my first attempt I probably wouldn't have made it a second time. Next time, I'm going to slice the lumpy bumpy tops off as well as slicing the cakes in half. Come to think of it, next time I might actually use cutters to make small individual layered cakes ....