Strawberry and cream cake

Its not often I get to hang out with my Mum in the kitchen but she is visiting from Australia at the moment and staying in this amazing cottage with its beautiful kitchen.

Mum loves to entertain and loves to try new ideas. She's a Food TV addict and was raving about the Strawberry and Cream Cake by James Martin before she came over and I was keen to see her in action making it. I've just been over to their rental cottage to have a Mum Master-Class in the and I thought I'd take a few photos and share it with you. So here goes:

First you need the ingredients listed in the link above. Take your cake ring and put it on the serving plate. This is one of those small ones for making an individual cake but you could use a large cake tin if you wanted to.

Use it to cut circles in your cake and put one in the bottom of the ring. Put sliced strawberries base down around the edge.

Pour your liqueur if wanted onto the sponge then put some cream, strawberries and more cream level with the tips of the strawberries that are round the edge.

Put another sponge ring on top.

Carefully lift the ring off with one hand while gently pushing the top sponge ring down. It should look like this. Your cream, sugar and custard mixture should be thick so it all holds together otherwise it will turn into a horrible gooey mess at this stage!

Get your icing sugar (doesn't this look pretty?)

and shake it all over your dessert.

Heat up a skewer on a gas ring and mark some lines in sugar with it (this step is optional but adds to the whole look. We didn't have a metal skewer so it didn't really work for us). I think we are using something out of the middle of one of those chinese paper lanterns. It was the closest thing I could find to a metal skewer!

Now comes the fun and very dangerous part. Grab a wooden spoon or a metal knife sharpener. Heat some sugar and water up until it caramelises then allow it to cool slightly.

Here's my Mum doing her thing.

When the caramel is cooled to dropping consistency, twirl it round your greased knife sharpener or wooden spoon handle. Allow it to cool a bit more so you don't burn your fingers and then very carefully take it off and put it to one side while you make some more.

Chop up another strawberry or use a small one with leaves on top and place it on top of your cake. Pop the twirly sugar on top as well and voila. Fab dessert to die for!

I think these twirly sugar things would look fab on special cupcakes too.

Have fun having a go!