Ups and downs of cake baking

Campbell's birthday today! He's now 13 - whoosh, time flies past.

He requested a chocolate cake (as usual) but when I went to bake his cake this morning someone, who was 12 until very recently, had polished off all the cocoa (he claims for making hot chocolate but I suspect he just mixes it with sugar and eats it with a spoon). So a quick review of the cupboard revealed that we were looking at a victoria sponge. Not a problem, except for the fact that I have a horror of making them as any I have made have turned out like table mats.

But, needs must and I carried bravely on. Mix looked a bit dodgy, not quite so smooth and creamy as I expected but into the oven it went. A quick look over the recipe revealed that there was a couple of spoonfuls of water in the ingredients but no mention of including this in the method - should it have gone in, if so when?

The cakes looked good in the oven. A test when they should are due to come out suggested a few more tense minutes. Out they came, looking a bit domed but nicely golden. When I turned them out on the rack the domes were higher than they looked in the tin, combined with very low edges. I wasn't sure how well two volcanoes were going to sandwich together with jam.

Jam! Who ate all the jam! (I have my suspicions)

No car today so I hopped on my bike to nip down to the shop in the village. Not far but I managed to go just at that point in the day when I was bombarded with ice cold needles of sleety rain and driving wind. Since when did baking involve suffering!?

Back in the kitchen I slathered the cake with jam, balance one half on top of the other and applied a dusting of icing sugar combined with a packet of jelly babies in the hope that no one would notice the dodgy cake below.

Now, at this point I should issue a warning. A dusting of icing sugar may look pretty but it also isn't fixed to the cake. When using it on a birthday cake be sure you are out of the path of flying dust and candle smoke.

Despite all of the trials and tribulations, the cake was a success. It may have been squint and decorated oddly, it may have been slightly well fired round the edges and of uneven shape but inside it was light and moist and very, very tasty.

Like all good cakes it vanished in the blink of an eye.