la coco noire.

Ever since I was a little'un, I always had a thing about angel cake. Something about the pink and yellow colouring that appealed to my little six year old self and made my younger years so prettily, sweetly satisfying. Anyway, until recently I hadn't eaten any for years, but when out shopping with my mum I saw it on the shelf and the mini-me inside rejoiced. This was short lived though, because it was soooo dry and completely unlike the heavenly sponge I'd built up in my head.  Gah. Sooooo, I decided that in order to curb my cravings, I'd just have to bake my own. Et voila, here we have my precious little angel cake which, if I do say so myself, is reeeeeeeally bloody good. So good I have had 3 slices so far today already. Angel cake is once again angelic in my mind.

I had soooo much trouble finding a recipe for this online (why don't people bake angel cake?!) so will post my method on here. I swapped it up a bit because we didn't have all the ingredients and there didn't seem to be enough filling mixture with the one I found online -  but I can confirm that even with the slight adjustments, it came out peeeeeerfect so you can trust me, promise.

Ingredients for cake:  200g soft butter  //  270g caster sugar  //  3 beaten eggs  //  270g plain flour  //  1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder  //  1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract  //  225ml buttermilk  //  red and yellow food colouring

Ingredients for filling: 120g soft butter  //  280g icing sugar  //  1 tablespoon milk  //  1 teaspoon vanilla extra

Method: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. In a bowl, cream together the butter and caster sugar. Add the eggs bit by bit. Then add half the flour, followed by half the buttermilk. Stir up! Then add the rest of the flour and buttermilk.

Divide it into three and add yellow food colouring to one and red to another. Bake for 30-40 minutes. When they're done, leave them to cool. You can neaten them up and cut the sides into perfect lines and stuff if you're OCD, or you can throw them all together in a rustic mess like me (the more cake the better!).

Then you gotta make the buttercream. Mix the butter and the icing sugar together in a bowl, add vanilla extract and if it's too stiff add a little milk to loosen it up. Then slather it in between the layers of the cake and lick the remainder out of the bowl. Sorted.

Voila, and incredibly delicious angel cake that won't last more than five minutes.