February is the shortest month of the year, and for me it’s often the busiest. All the members of my family (except me) have birthdays within two weeks of February, so I spend quite a bit of time planning and making birthday treats.

The thing that truly gets us through February, however, is the promise that it will end soon and spring will appear. My mum feels this very strongly. When I was a child I used to scoff a bit as she waxed lyrical about the blossoming trees on the way to school, and a houseful of daffodils at Christmas time is not to everyone’s taste. I’m sorry for chuckling, mum (I know you’re reading this).

At the risk of sounding like an episode of Call The Midwife, there’s a real joy in the promise of a new year. Waking up to find sunlight on the other side of your curtains instead of darkness- that’s progress. The possibility of eating and drinking outside, even if you’re swaddled in a blanket as you do it. I appreciate all the seasons in their own way, but there’s something particularly nice about spring.

This is why I decided to celebrate the (hopefully imminent) arrival of spring in my mum’s birthday cake this year, using some of her favourite flavours. She loves the freshness of lemons and raspberries, and I think they’re both tart enough to pair nicely in a sweet layer cake with buttercream icing. The colours are also gorgeous and bold.

I decorated the cake with wafer daisies, fresh strawberries cut into fans, and macarons sandwiched with lemon curd. The macarons didn’t turn out exactly as I intended- I didn’t give them enough drying time so they cracked in the oven and didn’t form pieds (the frills on the bottom of the macaron). I decided to use them anyway, because they taste perfectly fine, and once they were dusted with a bit of icing sugar they looked quite nice.

Lemon + raspberry layer cake

170g Gluten free self-raising flour

55g ground almonds

225g softened butter

170g white caster sugar

4 eggs

Zest of one lemon

Filling

One punnet of raspberries (around 225g)

250g softened butter

Icing sugar

Lemon curd (about 2 tbsp)

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees fan. Grease two sandwich cake tins and line the base with a circle of baking paper.
2. Combine the butter and sugar in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the rest of the cake ingredients and stir to combine.
3. Divide the cake batter evenly between the two tins and bake for about fifteen minutes until golden, and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Remove the sponges and leave to cool.
4. I don’t tend to weigh icing sugar when making buttercream icing, I judge it by eye and taste. First cream the butter, then add the sugar gradually until the icing tastes sweet enough for you. You can add other flavours, like vanilla, or leave it plain.
5. Place the icing into a piping bag with a round nozzle tip. Gently wash and dry the raspberries. Pipe a blob of icing and place a raspberry next to it. Continue around the perimeter of the cake and then work inwards, doing concentric circles of alternate raspberries and icing blobs.
6. When that layer is complete, spread some lemon curd on the other sponge and flip it on top of the bottom layer.
7. Decorate your sponge as you like!