tHE Jubilee Cake: 70 Years of Thanks

The Recipes Reimagined entry for the Queen’s Jubilee Platinum Pudding Competition. 70 cakes celebrating 70 years of service that the Queen’s given to the UK and Commonwealth. Made from cherry and lemon sponges, glued together with cherry jam and lemon curd, each block represents one of the Queen’s amazing achievements during her reign; 1957 with the first televised Christmas Message, to 1966 presenting the England team with the World Cup winning trophy, to being the first UK Monarch to address the US Congress in 1991. The cake is a collection of 70 individual memories.

Prep Time: 24hrs

Cook Time: 20 mins

Difficulty: Medium

Serves: 2

Ingredients

  • Unwaxed Lemons - 3

  • Cherries (frozen or fresh) - 100g (150g if fresh)

  • Double Cream - 70ml

  • Caster Sugar - 260g

  • Eggs - 4

  • Olive Oil - 200ml

  • Flour - 200g

  • Almond Flour - 90g

  • Baking Powder - 1.5 tsp

  • Salt - a pinch

  • Cherry Jam or Lemon Curd (or both if you have them)

For the topping

  • Fresh Cherry or glacier cherry

  • Double Cream - 50ml (whipped until stiff) or squirty cream

Method

Step One - Lining Tins

Pre-heat the oven to 160°C (180°C for non-fan ovens) and lightly oil the 2 loaf tins and place a sheet of baking paper in the base of each tin.

To prep for the lemon cake (using a fine grater) grate the zest of the lemons and set aside for later (try not to grate too much of the white pith from the lemons - it’s bitter - you just want the yellow zest part). Also juice enough of the lemons to get 70ml of lemon juice (it’ll be about 2 lemons), again set aside for later.

For the cherry cake, if you’re using frozen cherries gently simmer then in a pan with the lid on until warm through, then blitz to a wet paste. If you’re using fresh cherries, then de-stalk and de-stone them and blitz the flesh. Set aside for later.

 

Step Two - Cake Making

Add to a large bowl the flour, almond flour, baking powder, and salt - stir to blend them.

In a separate bowl add the eggs, olive oil, double cream (the 70ml for the cake, not the topping portion), and sugar. Whisk the wet mix until fully blended (you don’t need to whisk too much as you’re not trying to get air into it - the baking powder will give the cake he rise).

Stir a third of the wet mix into the dry mix, then another third, then the final third.

You now have your cake mix in one bowl. You now need to divide it equally between two bowls. the mix weights about 1kg so the easiest way is to pour 500g back into the other bowl (but go by eye, what looks like half of the mix).

 

Step THree - Cherry & Lemon

Now you have two mixes, pick one and gently stir the blitzed cherries. In the other mix stir in the lemon zest and juice into the other mix. So you have one red and one yellow cake batter.

Pour each mix into a separate baking tray and bake in the over for around 50 minutes, test by seeing if a skewer placed in the middle of the cake comes out clear of batter. Bake for a little longer if needed.

Once cooked, removed and leave to cool (you can remove the cakes from the tins after about 10 mins of cooling).

 

Step Four - 2cm sLICES

Once the cakes have cooled, it’s time for assembly.

You need up to eight 2cm by 2cm strips from each cake (see the photo for step 5). The easiest way to do this is to make a stencil, cut a 2cm strip from the long side of a piece of A4 printer paper.

Take your time with this bit. Using the paper strip as a guide, cut the cake down the longest side into 2cm slices (making sure the slices go straight down).

 

Step Five - 2CM BY 2CM STRIPS

Take each 2cm slice and lay them flat.

Again using the stencil and taking your time, cut the slices into long 2cm strips

If you don’t manage to get 8 strips don’t worry you don’t need that many,

 

Step Six - Sticking it Together

Using the lemon curd (or cherry jam if you’re not using lemon curd), glue 2 lemon and 2 cherry strips together in an alternating pattern (lemon, cherry, lemon, cherry).

Using the same 2cm paper stencil, cut a strip off the end of the lemon-cherry slice so that you get four 2cm cubes (2 lemon and 2 cherry).

Repeat this process for all the strips of cake that you have until you’ve turned them all into lines of 4 blocks. You do want to keep 2 individual lemon blocks and 4 cherry blocks spare for the top of the cake though.

 

Step Seven - CheckerBOard

Using more lemon curd (or cherry jam), glue 4 lines of lemon-cherry blocks together to make a 4x4 checkboard grid. Remember to turn the second and forth rows around so you get the alternating checkerboard pattern.

Repeat this process to make four 4x4 checkboards in total.

Top one 4x4 grid with cherry jam (or lemon curd if you’re not using cherry jam) and place another 4x4 grid on top (make sure the grid on top is rotated so that the blocks alternate with the later below)

Repeat this process for the third and forth tier (although make sure you don’t put jam on top of the forth tier).

 

Step Eight - Jubilee Cake

Using more cherry jam, stick the top 6 blocks of cake you kept spare on the top of the cake, like in the photo.

Pipe on some whipped cream and top with a cherry and a couple of very thing slices of lemon.

And that’s it, hope you enjoy!