Strawberries & Cream with White Balsamic Vanilla Cream for a HUGE DAY

Cake is love. And today is a big one for both.

I’ve made this for my smallest, Phoenix, since he could ask for cake. As a summer baby, strawberries and cream have been his favourite combination. With a vanilla almond song that happens to be gluten free but doesn’t taste like the mattress-like versions you can buy - this is the very best iteration I’ve made.

As my most involved chef child, who was crawling below deck at my earliest recipe shoots, was the cover-star on my first book and has stirred and chopped alongside me with intent ever since - he loves good cake but insists his birthday cake is gluten free - he is always crestfallen if we make something I can’t eat, which may be my favourite thing.

And today he becomes a teenager.

And we have a huge day of celebrating.

Not just the turning of time to teenage for the one I always look to as my soft-cheeked cherub. The older two return home after finishing both GCSE’s and A levels, and the oldest walks out of school for the last time, forever……it’s a sweeping moment that is both ecstatic after the intense months of exam life, and coloured with that specific sadness these inevitable endings bring.

For me emotional moments are necessarily underscored by the making of a centre piece, a display of love and joy and thought. And then the toasting and slicing and eating of a handsome cake together. So I give you this if you have some big moments coming up and you want to put your own cake together - it is the perfect British Summer celebration. Even if you make it and eat it through tears!

The very best gf summer sponge I promise.