How to Bake a Strawberry Cake

To Bake

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4

Cream the unsalted butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, adding a spoonful of self-raising flour between each.

Fold in the rest of the self-raising flour.

Pour the mixture into the two greased 18cm round tins and bake for approximately 25 minutes, until a cake skewer comes out clean.

Leave cakes in their tins to cool for 10 minutes. Turn out on to a wire rack to cool.

To Decorate

To make the buttercream, put the unsalted butter into a mixing bowl and beat until creamy in colour and light in texture. Sift the icing sugar into the bowl and combine, then add 3-4 tablespoons of milk and one teaspoon of vanilla extract and beat until smooth.

Sandwich the two sponge layers using a thin later of strawberry jam and buttercream.

Knead the Renshaw White Ready to Roll Icing until pliable before rolling out. Lightly dust your work surface with icing sugar and roll out icing to desired thickness.

Cover the Victoria Sponge with a thin layer of the remaining buttercream. Lift the icing over the cake smoothing down the sides with the palm of your hand.

Trim excess icing. To give a sheen to the surface, smooth with the palm of your hand.

Knead the Renshaw Lincoln Green Ready to Roll Icing until soft and pliable. Roll a small piece of the icing out into a long thin rope. Stick round the top edge of the cake in a wavy pattern, using cool boiled water.

Knead the Renshaw Poppy Red Ready to Roll Icing until soft and pliable. Mould approximately 9 or 10 pieces into a ball and then elongate into a pear shape. Mark small lines onto each shape to create a seed effect on the modelled strawberries.

Thinly roll out the remaining Renshaw Lincoln Green Ready to Roll Icing on a work surface lightly dusted with icing sugar and cut out small star shapes and small leaf shapes.

Stick the star shapes on top of the strawberries to create the stalk and mark the veins of the leaf with the back of a knife.

Stick the modelled strawberries and leaves randomly on the wavy green icing with cooled boiled water.

Knead the remaining Renshaw White Ready to Roll Icing until pliable before rolling out. Lightly dust your work surface with icing sugar and roll out icing to desired thickness.

Cut out small blossom shapes and stick onto the leaves with cooled boiled water.

Add a small ball of Renshaw Yellow Ready to Roll Icing to the centre of each flower to finish.