The brief was almond sponge. Some days I am good at following instructions. Other days, I like to do things my own way (which is a skewed way of following said instruction). This is a cake where we sort of met halfway.

I took the basic Japonaise cake - layers of almond meringue sandwiches between rich coffee buttercream and added two super moist layers of almond sponge cake. The result?

This amazingly tall, straight, delicious looking simplistic cake that was SO good. More than one person had a second slice.

I'm going to have to make this one again. Yeah, it's a bit time consuming (it would be a lot quicker if I had 6 racks in my oven!) but the result is just so worth it. 

And the symmetry on the inside... perfection. *cries*

I have to give a 10/10 to the cake cutter. The precision, effort and patience truly deserves an award. 

Beware: this is a rich cake. A cup of black tea or coffee would be perfect with a small slice of cake for tea.

There is always a certain amount of trepidation when I make pavlova. And I reckon that the back-up plan of "smashed pav" (and let's face it, smashed pav / eton's mess / whatever you want to call it... they're really good at reinvention on Masterchef) was probably only invented because of the high degree of failure's with this airy cake!

I was feeling ambitious. I haven't actually made Pavlova since Christmas. I made it twice for Christmas. The first time, I wanted it to look like a wreath but it collapsed so we had to cut it into pieces with berry coulis and fresh fruit on the side. The second time, it was beautiful but probably too wide and not high enough.

But for some reason, I thought I'd manage making a 4 layer pavlova with whipped cream and tons of raspberries, blueberries and strawberries in between plus a very thin layer of tangy lemon curd in between to balance out the flavours. Kind of hard when you can't pile on too much weight to the shells. Pavlovas are made to order and I am reluctant to sell these as they are so delicate and pretty much need to be eaten straight away for it to still be crispy on the outside and marshmallow-y on the inside. Not to mention that the delivery part would just take years off my life...

But tonight I made a SMASHING cake!! Looked awesome (very hard to cut though!) and it's my Aunty Sandy's favourite! YAY! Very special birthday for her today... *shhh you never ask a woman what her age is beyond 30!*

Ended up with two marshmallow-y layers and two crispy layers and loads and loads of fruit. Yummo. So proud of myself here ;)