Let's Eat #12, super light, moist sponge cake

It was my son's birthday party a couple of weeks ago and he asked for a Minion themed party. That wasn't a problem at all, except for the cake. A Minion cake is easy to find but a gluten free Minion cake is not so easy to find! Not to worry I thought, I'll make a sponge, ice it in blue and yellow and once it's cut, no one will know what was or wasn't on the top of the cake. That was my plan, but the guilt started to get to me and I ended up making a sponge cake and icing it with a Minion on the top. I couldn't leave TLC out!

Now I am no artist, in fact, I'm about as far from an artist and you can get and it is for that reason that I won't be showing you all a picture of my cake on full display in the middle of the party room (I used the shop bought one for that!)!!!! That said, for someone with so little artistic talent, I was REALLY pleased with what it looked like :) and most importantly, The Little Coeliac LOVED it! She was so excited when she came down on the morning of the party and saw it - I'd been getting her ready for the fact that her cake wouldn't look like a Minion, it would be similar colours but not exactly the same etc and when she saw it, I think she was pretty impressed! You know what, I'm sooooo pleased with it that I might put a little picture in.... just to prove that even if you aren't an expert you can make something pretty cool! And who cares if it doesn't look perfect!

The reason for saying all of this is that the cake was so easy to make but more importantly, was by far the best gluten free sponge cake I have ever tasted (and believe me, I've tried a few!). In fact, I genuinely don't think you would have known that it was gluten free. One of my son's friends is dairy free so I made it dairy free as well as gluten free. The recipe I used was the Juvela, basic sponge cake recipe and I used dairy free spread instead of butter.

There will be bakers reading this I am sure, who are far more knowledgeable about the technical merit of what I'm about to write but it worked so well that I thought it worth a mention. The method suggesting putting everything into a bow, mixing and baking. I found that idea somewhat worrying so I whisked the eggs really well before adding them to all of the other ingredients and I don't know whether or not that was the secret but the result was amazing! It was so good in fact that I used the same recipe a few days later for his actual birthday cake (the number 3 above). I made it a chocolate one rather than vanilla so that it was a little different but again, the result was fantastic and it lasted really well too. The decorations are my trusty chocolate beans...

Also, the icing was amazing too! My butter icing is always rubbish. I never seem to get the temperature of the butter right and it always ends up being lumpy but in using spread rather than butter, my icing was totally smooth and glossy!! I couldn't believe it!

All in all, I was delighted with the result and more importantly that everyone at the party could share in yummy Minion cake! 😋

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