Celebration Cakes

My mum is wonderful and I love her very much. Just putting it out there. She got a little offended that I didn't credit her for teaching me how to cook. Well, she didn't. She's taught me to do a lot of other things, but I can't lie and say I owe my love of cookery to her. This grief is from the woman who gave the world baked bean and cornflake casserole (as bad as it sounds). She does make a mean tuna lasagna, though. Scoff all you want, but it's a thousand times better than beef, or any other meat for that matter.

Anyway, it was my parents' 30th wedding anniversary a few weeks ago, and after coming back from holidaying with my brother, I thought it would be nice if one of their three children did something nice for them. So I knocked together these dinky little cakes - marbled sponges sandwiched with some butterscotch buttercream (butterscotch essence courtesy of my Nan bought from the baking department of Webbs of Wychbold), and some berry jam.

This is more of an ideas post, rather than a full recipe, mainly because I used the same cake recipe I always used (found in the wedding cake post and the courgette chocolate truffle cake post, just omit the courgette here, obviously!), divided the batter in half and flavoured one half with cocoa powder and the other with vanilla. I then swirled the batters together in the baking tin, and once they were baked cut out circles of the finished cake with a circle cookie cutter. For those interested, I used a 2 egg quantity batter. They cakes were finished with some white chocolate hearts that I piped with some chocolate that had been coloured pink with some red food colouring. These cakes were great because they were single serve and easy to present nicely. Happy anniversary mum and dad!