Creamy Plum and Almond sponge

I recently had great fun baking cakes and raising money for Macmillan along with Cosy Bean Coffee, Say it with Flours and The Mixing Bowl. Cosy Bean is a great independent coffee shop that has a lovely community feel and has regular events to bring in the locals. Say it with flours and The mixing bowl are both small baking businesses based in South Liverpool, providing home baked treats to local coffee shops and homes. We all decided to get together to share our love of cake and raise a few pennies for a really good cause. I made a Brazil nut cappuccino cake, iced buns and a creamy plum and almond sponge cake, all of which went down very well but the plum cake was a particular success. I decided to make the cake as I had a fresh jar of homemade plum and almond jam that I was looking forward to using. For the jam I made this basic plum jam recipe and then added 2 drops of almond essence to give it an extra flavour.

Ingredients

For the sponge

3 medium eggs
175g self raising flour
175g caster sugar
175g unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp almond essence

For the filling

3 tbsp plum jam
150ml fresh double cream, whipped

For topping

150g icing sugar
1tbsp milk
pink icing for piping

Method

1. Preheat oven to Gas mark 4/180 degrees. Make the sponge by beating the butter and sugar until smooth then adding eggs, vanilla and almond essence and milk. Once combined sift in the flour and mix gently. Divide the mixture between 2 round cake tins ( I used 20cm tin)
2. Whip the double cream and poor onto one of sponge bases, once the cake has cooled. Once the cream is spread onto the cake add on the jam and spread before adding top layer of sponge.
3. Mix the icing sugar with the milk and spread the icing on to the top layer. Once the icing has set, pipe the pink icing in lines, first of all vertical then horizontal to make a criss cross pattern on top of cake.