As the summer school holidays draw to a close for another year, autumn draws near, the sunset of the year draws in.

The Cake….

It’s a 7″ sponge cake with a cheesecake filling wrapped in buttercream.

Start with the cheesecake filling the day before, to allow for it to cool properly.

Line a 7″ cake tin with enough greaseproof paper to come up the sides. You’ll find that if you scrunch up the paper before lining, it will line better. Preheat the oven to Gas 6/180c fan.

• 280g cream cheese
• 90ml double cream
• 50g icing sugar
• 25g cornflour
• 80g chopped strawberries
• 1 egg

Whisk together all of the ingredients until well combined and pour into the lined tin. Bake for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to Gas 1/2 or 120c fan for a further 25 minutes. Then switch the oven off, and leave it to cool in the oven for about an hour. Remove from the oven, ensure it’s cool and at room temperature before removing from the tin, covering and putting in the fridge to firm up and set.

For the sponge cake then,

Preheat the oven to Gas 4′ 175c, 160c fan and line 2 x 7″ cake tins.

To make this simple, make it as an all-in-one and beat well for several minutes to get as much air in as you can –

• 210g soft butter
• 190g caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 190g gluten free self raising flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 90g chopped strawberries
• a pinch of red food colour (optional)
• 40ml milk

Pour into your prepared cake tins and bake for about 25 – 30 minutes. Or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Cool before removing from the cake tins and cooling completely before filling and icing.

To finish with buttercream;

• 200g soft butter
• 400g icing sugar
• 80g chopped strawberries
• Red food colouring (I use Pro Gel from Rainbow Dust) – this link clicks through to Amazon

Beat the butter until light and fluffy, mix in the icing sugar a bit at a time, to avoid a dust cloud. Then beat (using a hand-held whisk or table top mixer) until light and fluffy. Once you have sandwiched the cake together with the cheesecake in the middle, lightly cover the cake in the ‘cake crumb’ buttercream – to aid the final spread – and leave to set in the fridge for about an hour. With the remaining buttercream, colour roughly a third with red colour and mix well.

Once the cake crumb surface has set, layer on the red buttercream on the bottom half of the cake, then layer on the plain colour buttercream on the top half and surface of the cake, smooth out and decorate with more strawberries.