I Love de Cake... Cinnamon Sponge with Raspberries and Cream

OK.  First things first.  I rarely if ever bake desserts.
Ever.

There are a couple of reasons for this.

The first is I tend to take my sugars via the agency of alcohol.  If I ate dessert I would be as fat as a fool.

The second is, as a "bloke", the cooking of desserts I feel is almost exclusively a woman's domain.

Call me sexist if you must, but serving someone up a Bombe Alaska, or a home baked chocolate cake, is best done while wearing a skirt.  Or possibly lingerie.  It's an entirely different thing to cooking a steak, or a casserole, or even making a salad.

The furthest I can bring myself to go in the realm of desserts, usually, is making pancakes, or maybe ice cream with fruit, otherwise I feel like I'm cross dressing – and the undies just don't fit right.

Alright, fine, I have made meringues, but that was only because I had left over egg whites and I took them somewhere else, and got the lady of the house to dress them with strawberries and cream and present them to the table.

(It is at this point I can hear my readership thinking: Calling Dr Freud!  We've got a live one here...)

Notwithstanding my own inexplicable prejudices, I did think I'd pass this recipe on to any would be cake makers.

It is without a doubt the BEST cake I have eaten in years, and it was with some self restraint that I held myself back from scoffing the lot.  Because we don't want to end up in Fat Fighters, now do we?

It was my Dad's birthday recently (his age shall remain undisclosed in this account; he can tell you if he wants), and my Mum baked a cake that was just out of this world (Calling Dr Freud!  His mother's involved...).  It's a cinnamon sponge, with raspberries and cream in the centre, and she got the recipe online from the New Zealand Women's weekly.

Here's the method:

• 4 eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tsp golden syrup
• 3/4 cup cornflour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp cocoa
• 300ml cream
• 1 punnet strawberries or raspberries
• 1 tbsp icing sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Line 2 x 20cm cake tins with baking paper.

2. Using an electric beater, beat eggs, sugar and golden syrup together for 10 minutes.

3. Sift over combined cornflour, baking soda, cream of tartar, cinnamon and cocoa.

4. Gently fold these into the egg mixture. Pour mixture into prepared tins and bake for 16 minutes.

5. Allow to cool in tins for 10 minutes before turning them out to cool on a wire rack.

6. Beat cream until soft peaks form. Spread cream over one sponge, then top with sliced strawberries or whole raspberries.

7. Top with the remaining sponge half. Sift over icing sugar and serve with any cream left over.

I rate this cake, if cooked as it was served to me that night, a total success, eight tentacles out of eight, or a five star dessert (in a normal rating system).

You're welcome.

Hang on!  What do you mean I've got to get off the couch and you've got other people waiting? We've run out of time?  When can I come back for my next appointment?  I just remembered I had a dream the other night about being a shoe, and then this flying fish came in the window with a spy glass and asked me if I'd like to join him in his detective agency...