Self- made birthday cake

It was my birthday recently and I took it upon myself to make my own cake. I decided to make it by adapting a Victoria Sandwich recipe from an old cookbook from the seventies.

With the overproduced country rock and singer-songwriter stabs of Neil Young's eponymous first album darting out of the speakers I creamed in a bowl four ounces of margarine and four ounces of caster sugar. I knew I had mixed the ingredients together properly because the butter looked like it had fluff on it which told me the sugar had bonded with it.

I next beat two eggs into the mixture while periodically adding four ounces of self-raising flour. Once all the flour had been fully stirred in the cake mix was ready to bake. I greased a 20cm wide and 10cm deep cake tin with margarine and a sprinkling of plain flour.

Before I put the mixture into the tin I used a trick learned from a friend who is a talented cook as well and added 300 millelitres of skimmed milk to the mixture so as to make the sponge light and give it plenty of air.
I then added it to the tin and cooked it in the fanned oven at 170 degrees (180 if your oven isn't a fan one) for forty-five minutes. I knew sponge was ready as when I took it out of the oven it sprung back like a soft mattress when I pressed it with my hand.

While the sponge was on the side cooling I made the butter cream icing by taking a hint of vanilla essence, two ounces of butter and four ounces of icing sugar. I mixed these together in a bowl until I had sticky paste to which I added some red food colouring which dampened the icing a little.

After the sponge had cooled I cut the cake in half widthways and spread half the icing over the bottom half of it so as to form a sandwich. I then spread the other half of the icing on top of the cake. I was a little disappointed as the food colouring had turned the icing pink instead of red and therefore it was clear that aesthetics were not going to be the strong point of this cake.

However the taste was a different story; the sweet , rich buttercream icing was kept from being too overpowering by the light sponge which was helped in its lightness through the addition of the milk prior to cooking.

Cake from Big Pink: the icing may have not been the best colour but it was  certainly tasty enough.