a christening cake

... lincolnshire bloggers are a rare breed... there's Gary up to the north of the county and Em over to the west but like the proverbial london buses there are four in a very tight cluster just south of Louth... if you like to read about adventures in the kitchen there's me, of course... who could forget?... if beauty with words is your thing then The Viking may be the one... if you like something left-field... and I'm talking WAY over to the left... there's The Owl Wood... and then in a comfy corner of a sleepy village there's the rather wonderful and fiercely scone-competitive Elaine from The Pear Tree Log...

... Elaine celebrated the christening of her grand-daughter Francesca Esme Clarkson in style on Sunday with a garden party... it was like something out of a thoroughly old-fashioned British novel set sometime between the wars... the weather was fine, the lawn was green, an old-fashioned gramophone played scratchy records and the food was sublime with a hunk of ham, freshly baked bread, wedges of Lincolnshire Poacher and lashings of scones and strawberry jam ... and of course I wanted to contribute in my own special way...

blackcurrant ripple christening cake

whilst I realise that 'pink for girls' is not particularly politically correct I really couldn't help myself... the food colouring was calling to me and I had a splash of inspiration about the rippled icing from Great British Bake Off hero Edd Kimber's brilliant The Boy Who Bakes cook book... he recreates the raspberry ripple with a fresh cream icing but I only had a block of butter and blackcurrant jam in the fridge and so the blackcurrant ripple cake was born...

for the sponge

i created a classic victoria sponge with the 'weigh the eggs' method but added a dash of food colouring in the final whisk... as you can see I decided to trim the edges of the cooked cake as they came out a dark pink colour that wasn't particularly inspiring... the recipe for my victoria sponge can be found here

for the butter cream ripple icing

200g butter - room temperature

250g icing sugar

a little milk

2 tablespoons blackcurrant jam

- whisk the butter into a frenzy then gradually add the icing sugar till you have a nice, thick consistency

- add one tablespoon of blackcurrant jam and whisk in

- add a little milk in needed to make the consistency spreadable and use half to sandwich the cake and with the other half, spread on top in a circular motion and then take the remaining jam and, using a knife, swirl it in to create the ripple effect

eat and of course, enjoy!