Mothers Day

Happy Mothers day, I hope you're all enjoying a lovely day. So, today's mothers day and today's a bit of a weird year as it's snowing; no I am not joking, it is snowing. In March. On Mother's Day, it is snowing... I woke up this morning and my initial thought was "oh no, I've slept in", we wanted to do breakfast in bed for Mum and she gets up ridiculously early, but it was Ok because she slept in too! Phew! But my second thought as looked out the window was "What on earth, SNOW! Oh my god... why is it snowing?" I haven't really been watching the weather forecast all that closely but there had been rumours of snow. I thought someone was joking, turns out they weren't... we descend into the ice age once more. Its not all bad though, the dog loves it,  it's very pretty, and sledging here we come!

Anyway,back to the real topic of this post, mothers day. I honestly never do enough on Mother's day, my Mum deserves so much more than breakfast in bed. Mum, I love and you are the best, we don't thank you enough so, thankyou, lots of love and hugs too xoxox

In the pictures is the cake I made for Mother's day it's iced with vanilla butter cream and there's jam inside. It's not that fancy but there's a surprise inside, it's striped! But I haven't cut it yet so you'll have to wait for pictures of that.

Happy Mother's day, whatever you're doing!

Much Love Alex-Rose xx

Stripey Sponge- from  Great British Bake off book

Ingredients (for cake 1):
225g unsalted butter, softened
225g caster sugar
4 large free-range eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
225g self-raising flour

1 large piping bag

Ingredients (for cake 2):
225g unsalted butter, softened
225g caster sugar
4 large free-range eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
225g self-raising flour
3/4 large tablespoon cocoa powder
1 tablespoon milk
1 large piping bag

Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 180c and line two round cake tins.

Beat the butter for cake one in a large bowl and then add the sugar, keep beating until the mixture is very pale and light (you could do this with either a wooden spoon or an electric mixer). In a mug beat the eggs with the vanilla and then gradually add to the butter mix. Beat well after every addition  Continue until there is no more egg then sift in the flour, fold very gently until just combined.  Spoon into a plastic piping bag, do not cut the end yet. Set the mixture aside and move onto cake two.

Repeat the steps for cake 1 but add the cocoa powder, sift it in this with the flour. Spoon this mixture into another piping bag. Set the cake tins in front of you and cut the ends of the piping bags, you need the hole to be big. In turn, pipe stripes of the cake batter into the cake tin untill the bottom of the tins are covered. Place them onto the middle shelf of your oven for around 30 minutes. 

To Decorate:

• Strawberry jam
• batch of butter cream icing
• food dye

Spread jam over one cake and sandwich the two together before covering with buttercream and decorating with buttercream swirls and any other decorations of your choice! xx

Butter Icing:

• 250g Icing Sugar
• 80g Softened Butter
• 2 Tablespoons of Milk
• 1/4 Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract

Method:
Put the butter and icing sugar into the bowl of a free-standing mixer and beat on a slow/medium speed until it comes together,  then turn up the speed. Continue to beat. In a separate bowl whisk the vanilla and the milk before adding gradually to the butter and icing sugar. Beat on a high speed for a further five minutes and then spoon into a piping bag and swirl onto the cooled cake. Dye any left over icing a pastel shade and use to decorate (or make an extra, smaller, batch of the icing)