Celebrity chef Adrian ‘Richo’ Richardson provides a recipe for a Strawberry Sponge Birthday Cake - a recipe that’s as easy or hard as you would like to make it.

RECIPE

This cake can be as simple or as hard as you want to make it. For me the easier the better, but if you want to get all fancy with different layers and shapes, go right ahead, this cake base is bullet proof I use the freshest of strawberries, and only homemade jam, plenty of cream and real vanilla to make the sponge

Ingredients:

90 g butter
6 eggs
175 g caster sugar
150 g SR Flour
¼ vanilla pod scrapings

2 punnets strawberries, washed, stem removed (500 gms)
1/2 cup home made strawberry jam (I like to thin the jam out a bit with a few tabs of brandy)
400mls cream whipped till stiff with 2-tab castor sugar

Method
Separate eggs, melt butter
Add sugar to yolks, and vanilla & whisk to white creamy consistency
Add sifted flour, and then melted butter DO NOT STIR
Whisk whites to peaking & fluffy consistency
Add 1/3 egg white to the other mixture & fold Thoroughly through
Then fold in rest of egg white mixture
Place in 25cm greased and lined with baking paper, cake tin and bake at 180C in pastry oven

For 40 minutes
Cool on cake rack

Cut cake in half (please do we need to explain which axis?)
Smear bottom layer with jam and a thin layer of cream
Cover sides and top with remaining cream and arrange strawberries on top
Serve

Variation
Bake sponge on a tray and fill, roll like a swiss roll