Esther Chilton

Mum’s Seriously Scrumptious Sponge

I always loved it when Mum said she was going to make a sponge – especially the licking out the bowl part. I remember how she would sit me on the work top and I’d run my fingers round the bowl and then slurp the gooey mixture from my fingers. Then, when I was about 8, I started to help Mum. Money was tight, so sometimes there would only be a little bit of butter icing in the middle and a dusting of icing sugar on the top.

Perhaps that’s why, when I had my own daughter, we packed everything we could into the cake. Often butter icing would be oozing over the sides and the topping of each cake became more elaborate than the last, crammed with tasty treats. I feel we’ve done Mum proud but, we both have to agree, there’s nothing quite like Mum’s sponge. 

Ingredients

Self-raising flour, caster sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla essence, icing sugar, milk, block of chocolate, marshmallows, Maltesers, sprinkles and anything else going!

Mix 6oz of the following together in a bowl: self-raising flour, caster sugar and butter. Add 3 eggs and 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence. Stir together until you have a smooth mixture. Spoon the mixture equally into 2 7inch cake tins. Bake at 150 degrees for 20 minutes. Leave to cool.

For the butter icing for the middle, add 2 ½ oz butter to 4 oz icing sugar and a few drops of vanilla essence to flavour. Beat together until smooth and creamy. Add a small amount of milk if necessary. Spread the butter icing on the inside of one of the cooled cake halves. Place the other cake half on top insides together.

For the topping, break 1/3 of a 200g bar of chocolate into a glass bowl. Place the bowl on top of a saucepan of water and gently heat on the hob until the chocolate has melted. Spread the melted chocolate over the top of the cake. Whilst still soft, decorate with hundreds and thousands, chocolate stars, marshmallows, – in fact, anything you like!