To buy a cake is relatively easy. Baking a cake may be more tricky. To me, the hardest is to bake a sponge cake. It’s either too thick or too flat but never the one I want. As we celebrated my daughter’s 18th birthday, I made up my mind that I want to bake the birthday cake for her. It was important that it is gluten free and sugar free at the same time. This cake turned out to be a really good one.

Ingredients:

For the sponge cake:

• 2.65 oz (75 g) almond flour
• 2.65 oz (75 g) gluten free oat flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 8 eggs
• 1.7 oz (50 g) unsalted butter
• a pinch of salt
• 10 pockets of healthy sweetener

Instructions:

1. Sift the dry ingredients (salt, baking powder, almond flour, and oat flour) into a large bowl. Depending on how well the flours are grounded, they might be harder to sift. If you can’t, just make sure not to pat the dry mixture down, instead mix it with a whisk, to add some air into it.
2. Separate the eggs.
3. Add the sweetener to the yolks and beat this two ingredient mixture until it becomes light yellow and bubbly, then add the melted butter to it and keep mixing.
4. Whip the egg whites until it doesn’t fall out of the bowl when you turn it upside down. (If you are scared or not sure if you whipped them enough, don’t experiment with it. 🙂 )
5. Add the yolks to the whites and mix it together very gently with a spatula using circular motions. (You have to be very gentle to avoid smashing the air bubbles out of the whites.)
6. Spoon by spoon mix in the dry mixture to the eggs. Again use circular and gentle motions to mix the flour mix into the egg mixture. (You can sift the flour mix again when adding it to the eggs, for adding some extra air into it, but it’s optional.)
7. Line the bottom of the cake pan with parchment paper, and grease the sides with butter.
8. Divide the batter in 3 and bake each amount separately for 6-7 minutes. Check with a toothpick if they are ready. If batter sticks to the toothpick, bake it for 1-2 extra minutes.

For the cream filling:

• 26.5 oz (750 g) mascarpone
• 20 fl oz. (600 ml) heavy cream – whipping cream
• 1 pocket of unflavored gelatin mix
• 15 pockets of sweetener or more if you like it more sweet

Instructions:

1. Put the mascarpone in a bowl and mix it to soften it a bit while adding the sweetener.
2. Whip the heavy whipping cream with the gelatin for 1 to 2 minutes.
3. Mix the two creams together with the same circular motions you used while making the cake batter.
4. You can leave it in the bowl or put it into a decorating bag. Unless you are assembling the cake right after you have made the cream put it into the fridge until its use.

Onto the top:

• 8.8.oz (250 g) berry mix (I used frozen)
• 5 pockets of sweetener
• 1 pocket of unflavored gelatin mix

For in between the layers and for decoration on the top, you will need 17 o.z. strawberries. Which you have to cut into slices, maybe leaving some as wholes or halves for decoration.

Instructions:

1. Heat up the berry mix, blend them together, add the gelatin mix and the sweetener.
2. When ready, cool it down a bit but be careful, it has to stay a liquid so that you can pour it onto the top of the cake.

Instructions for finally assembling the cake:

1. Put 1/5 of the cream onto the first layer of cake. If you don’t have a decorating bag, just use a spoon to scoop the cream onto the cake layer.
2. Add half of the sliced strawberries and press them down a bit into the cream.
3. Put another 1/5 onto the strawberry layer, to cover fill in the gaps between the strawberries and the second layer of cake.
4. Put the second layer of cake on top, and repeat processes 1-3.
5. Put the remaining (1/5) of the cream on top of the third layer of cake. If for some reason it became runny, put the whole cake into the fridge for about 10 minutes.
6. Put a layer of parchment paper around the cake. Make sure that it is at least 1/2 inch taller than the cake itself, because it has to keep the jelly on the top of the cake. Pour the liquid fruit jelly on top. Make sure that it is evenly distributed everywhere on top of the cake.
7. Now you can decorate it any way you would like. Add some slices of strawberry, add different berries, or like we did half of a strawberry on top, etc…

Tip: If you don’t want the plate around your cake to be messy and you don’t want to transfer the whole cake onto another plate once you decorated it, tear smaller pieces of parchment paper and put it under the cake’s perimeter. Once you have assembled the cake just pull out the pieces, and there should be no mess.

Now, enjoy, and if you have made it for someone’s birthday, happy birthday!