To mark the seventeenth year of my gorgeous little sister’s life I decided to put my creative apron on and make her a beautiful birthday cake! But where would I find the recipe for such a cake?The answer was simple. Last week when I was drooling over my absolute favourite food blog, I came across the most beautiful looking Sprinkle Cake I have ever seen! If you have haven’t heard of Not Quite Nigella, your food blogging radar must be switched to off mode! A seriously fabulous blog, Not Quite Nigella provides all of her readers with exciting restaurant reviews, an amazing selection of recipes and everything else that a foodie (like myself) loves to read! If you haven’t visited NQN, please click here and you will instantly understand why I love it so much!

So, as you can imagine, when I stumbled across this beautiful Sprinkle Cake recipe,  I just had to try it!

Not Quite Nigella’s beautiful Sprinkle Cake

(recipe, in its complete form, by Not Quite Nigella)

Makes a tall 10cm diameter chocolate sponge cake, for a regular, larger sized cake, double the recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 duck eggs (medium sized 420g are fine) or 5 large chicken eggs at room temperature
• 1/3 cup caster/superfine sugar
• 1/3 cup plain flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• A little butter and flour to grease the tins
• 2 sponge tins or 2 spring form tins in the same size
• 250ml/1 cup of pure cream
• 1/2 cup strawberry jam
• 1 cup sprinkles

1. Arrange oven rack so that it sits in the centre of the oven. Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Grease 2 x 10cm/4 inch round pans with butter and sift flour over butter and shake out excess flour. Whisk eggs and sugar on a medium high setting (I used setting #6 on the Kitchenaid) for about 8 minutes until it has turned very pale and very thick and has increased in volume to at least 3 times its original volume.

2. Meanwhile, sift the flour and cocoa powder three times. Each time, do it at a bit of a height and tap the side of the sieve with the heel of your hand or use your wrist to shake it back and forth (rather than pressing down on the flour with a spoon).

3. When the egg mixture is ready, ensure that the oven is at the correct temperature. Have everything ready as the timing is crucial now. Sift the flour into the mixture and then fold the mixture underneath. This helps to avoid the lumps. Use the up, down and under folding motion (do not stir). It folds easily and should be able to be incorporated easily. Quickly spoon it into the tins and bake in the centre row of the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes. It should spring back slightly when touched and the edges should pull back from the tin.

4. Cool in the tins for 5 minutes and then remove from the tin gently and cool on a wire rack. You can wrap these in cling wrap once cool and decorate it the next day.

5. Slice off the tops of the sponges to create an even cake. Spread the centre of the bottom cake with jam.

6. Whip the cream until it reaches firm peaks and spread some in the centre of the cake on top of the jam. Then, using an angled spatula, spread the cream around the outside of the cake. Smooth the sides. Then place the cake on its stand in a large bowl to catch the sprinkles. Sprinkle the hundreds and thousands on top and around the sides pushing them gently in with your fingers as you are raining them down. Use a length of ribbon to cover up any less than perfect bits on the bottom if you have them. Chill until serving.

Here are some photographs of my first attempt at NQN’s Sprinkle Cake!

My heart shaped tins filled and ready for the oven!

Heart sponges cooling

Beautiful lilac ribbon for decoration; from my favourite ribbon stockist, Barb!

Cake assembled and ready for sprinkles!

All ready for the birthday girl

Beautiful!

When making this gorgeous cake, I made a few minor changes simply because I did not have the correct pans!

Instead of two spring form pans, I used my two heart shaped cake tins (I did not have an appropriately sized spring form pan so just compromised with the hearts!).

As the heart tins were not spring form, I made the decision to line each of them with baking paper cut to size. My non-fan forced oven is relentless for ruining cakes so, for me, it is always best to be on the safe side and use baking paper. Even though I know baking paper can interfere with perfect shapes, it was a risk I had to take!

As for the sprinkles, they were so much fun! Let’s just say my kitchen floor was very colourful after the icing was complete!

So if you are wanting to create this absolutely delicious cake, please try Not Quite Nigella’s recipe!