I’m on holiday. But as I am such an industrious soul I had whipped up this not hugely exciting, but quite lovely cake.

As with almost none of my recipes this very almost qualifies as healthy. It is fatless and if you really aren’t a fan of happiness you don’t even have to use cream to decorate.

As for the odd green chap in the top photo, that’s a combination of sister #3 and 5’s fault. #3 noted I was lacking in greenery in some of my photos so when I was photographing this cake I asked #5 if she could think of anything green that would augment my photo. I should have been more specific.

To the cake. It is the work of Rachel Allen. Now leave her alone, her recipes are actually wonderfully reliable and usually quite delicious.

I am writing this on a ‘smart’ phone, an ironically named device, and I have countless bug bites that are driving me very far past insane so I care not that my photos are captionless and poorly sized.

Onwards.

Oven temperature 180 Celsius

Plain flour                    125g

Pinch o’ salt

Caster sugar               175g

Cream of tartar          1/2teaspoon

Egg whites                 8

Vanilla extract            2 teaspoons

Preheat the oven and grease a 23cm tin with butter then dust with flour. Cut a disk of baking parchment and place that in the base.

Put the flour, salt and 150g of caster sugar into a bowl and stir.

In a separate bowl put the remaining 25g of sugar and mix it with the cream of tartar.

Crack your 8 egg whites into a big mixing bowl. May I suggest using the leftover egg yolks to make a Nutella brioche pudding?

So. Egg whites. Whisk them with electric beaters till they start to go opaque and bubbly, this’ll take no time at all – about 30seconds.

Now tip in the sugar-cream of tartar mix and continue to whisk till the egg whites are lovely and glossy and firm peaked.

Fold in the vanilla extract and then add in a quarter of the flour mix. Fold. Add another quarter of the flour mix. Fold. Add another quarter. Fold. Add the final quarter and fold. Do all this very gently.

That’s the cake made. Pour it carefully into the prepared tin and smooth down the top.

Pop it in th oven for about 25 – 30mins or until golden brown and springy to the touch.

     

Leave in the tin to cool down completely before removing from the tin.

I chose to top mine with slightly sweetened, vanilla cream. You can make this to your own tastes. I whipped about 300ml of cream with 1 tablespoon of icing sugar and a generous teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Then add some fruit and a little green robot. Delicious.