It has been a lovely, relaxing, restful and very enjoyable two-week holiday with my little family as we travelled up and down Australia’s South East Coast. I hope to share some of our experiences and adventures from these beautiful parts of the world over the next few weeks. I don’t want to bore anyone, so I’ll mix it up with other things that I know you all love to read about.

I’ll kick off with a baking idea that I highly recommend you all try once in your life – a true vanilla sponge cake. You may recall I had wanted to make a sponge for Husband’s birthday cake, but I ended up cheating and buying a packet mix. So when Evie’s birthday rolled around in the first week of our ‘Holiday of the Year Adventure’, I jumped at the opportunity to mess up my mum’s kitchen and use all of her pantry ingredients to create the yummiest birthday sponge EVER! Making a sponge from scratch has been on my to-do list for some time, so I was over the moon when my very first attempt turned out so well.

This is how I did it…

– I had to find the most old-school recipe book I could…this is IT! -

– A photo of the recipe page that has been loved and even has samples -

– The recipe -

– Separating the yolks from the whites -

– A sponge is all about the fluffy egg whites, so a good beating is in order -

– Beat until stiff peaks form -

The trick here is to mix the doubly-sifted flours into the stiff egg whites carefully, so as not to knock out all the lovely, fluffy air bubbles.

– Into a lined, greased cake tin (I made two cakes so I could make layers) -

– Fresh out of the oven -

– The two baked sponges just cooling off -

I cut the two sponges into two layers each (creating four levels) and layered the first one with the yummy Pasticciera Cream (Italian pastry cream) and then the next layer with strawberry jam and whipped cream, then the Italian pastry cream again.

– Yummy. The final masterpiece -

– We had a little Dorothy garden party -

– Yummy teacups for Dorothy’s Garden Party -

– Dorothy’s rosy tea was a must at the garden party -

– And of course…fairy bread -

– Blowing out the candles -

– Evie had such a great birthday party -

– The cake was the centrepiece of Dorothy’s Garden Party -

I was REALLY happy with the result and will definitely be attempting more sponges for future birthdays.

Have you ever made a real sponge? What do you know about the sponge?