Eton mess layer cake

Mess by name, mess by nature (keep reading)

A couple of weeks ago, I made one of the most joyous cake commissions I’ve ever received. It was for a 100th birthday party. At the Hurlingham Club. My heart!

More on the 100th cake in a moment, but first, a few words on the Hurlingham Club. Known to most as a royal handout and - chiefly - the place Lady Di was often photographed in enviable 90s lycra - the Hurlingham Club is one of London’s last relics of a time gone by. Sprawling across acres of prime real estate in SW London, the club looks like a set for The Crown. It’s just the same now as it was then.

I’ve made cakes for a few weddings and events there, and I love the chance to drop in - not because of any of the above connotations (thought Lady Di’s 90s looks do dominate my saved posts on Instagram), but because it’s the place my Granny used to go most days during her later years in London. A fierce croquet player (she went on to represent New Zealand - her homeland and the place she returned for the final decade of her life - in the over 85s category!), her membership to the club was one of her few luxuries.

She’d travel down to Fulham from her home in Mill Hill to dominate on the lawns, and swim almost daily - and occasionally, took her lucky grandchildren with her when we stayed with her in the city. We were under strict instructions to behave in the pool, and occasionally managed to negotiate an iced tea on the terrace afterwards, wet hair dripping into our drinks and elated to have found ourselves there. When she left London, so did our chance to visit the Club, but going back with my work feels like the truest connection I have to that incredible, beautiful lady.

Granny died many years ago, but when this brief came in, it occurred to me that she would have been close in age to the birthday boy who’s cake I was making and who, it so happened, had also spent most of his life in North London. To celebrate such a momentous birthday, I made three huge number cakes - the 1 was gluten free, being 2023 - filled with strawberries, cream and vanilla flecked mascarpone. I used almost all of the 2.5kg of British strawberries I bought for the commission, but was left with a small bowl of fruit, so asked you (over on Instagram - follow me here if you don’t already!) which recipe I should try.

This Eton Mess cake narrowly edged out a summer strawberry tiramisu in the poll (strawb tiramisu, I’ve not forgotten you - let’s chat next summer), so I got to work one Friday evening on testing a recipe. Things didn’t go *quite* to plan, and I’m going to go into that, as the failures of recipe testing rarely get the airtime they probably deserve. The final cake, while not quite what I’d initially planned, was so delicious, and felt fittingly true to the original foundations of the iconic dessert that inspired it.

The core components of an Eton Mess are strawberries, meringue and cream. When it came it translating that into a cake, I had a lot of ideas. I didn’t just want to fill a plain sponge cake with strawberries and cream - that’s delicious, but it’s hardly an Eton Mess. I also didn’t want to just top whatever I made with crushed meringue - again, delicious, but a little feeble in my opinion.

I decided to bake the berries into the sponge, and make a meringue-based icing or topping to complete the cake. It all started brilliantly, until I realised I was totally out of butter - a stumbling block in cake making. So I pivoted to a fatless yoghurt-based sponge, adding chopped hazelnuts to bring a little fat to the equation. Next, the marshmallow ‘buttercream’ I’d planned - my nod to meringue - was too runny to pipe into the bubbles I’d envisaged. Again, I pivoted, folding it into the mascarpone I’d planned to alternate it with. The result, while leaving my kitchen looking like a minor chemical disaster had occurred, was utterly delicious, so I rolled with it - and everyone loved it. A true story of rubies in the rubble, of rolling with the baking punches, and making do with what you have.

Maybe some of that croquet-winning spirit, last seen in 1999 at The Hurlingham Club, has trickled down to me. And if that’s the case, lucky old me.

I’ve adapted the below recipe to just use mascarpone to finish the cake as, quite frankly, you don’t need to repeat the hassle of making and then reinventing a failed marshmallow buttercream. But if the urge to include meringue takes you, go for it - and know it can be rescued with a tub of mascarpone if yours also goes wrong.

300g strawberries

1 lemon

2 eggs

200g caster sugar

200g sour cream or yoghurt

200g self-raising flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp fine salt

100g chopped hazelnuts

500g mascarpone

2 tsp vanilla bean paste

Crushed meringues (I know, I know) - optional

Heat the oven to 170C and line a 20x30cm sheet tin with high edges with baking paper.

Zest the lemon, then set the zest aside.

Chop 200g of the strawberries into halves or quarters if they’re big, and place in a bowl with the juice of the lemon. Mix, then leave to macerate while you' make the cake.

Place the eggs and sugar in a bowl, and whisk for 5-8 minutes until very pale and volumised. Add the zest of the lemon, yoghurt, flour, baking powder and salt, then fold through until combined.

Add the hazelnuts and chopped strawberries (plus any liquid that’s in the bowl), mix to combine, then pour into the lined tin and level out so it reaches all the corners and has a flat and even surface. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, until golden and a toothpick or knife inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool.

Mix the mascarpone with the vanilla paste. Chop the remaining strawberries in half, leaving any smaller ones whole.

Cut the cake in half, then use the masrcapone to sandwich and top the cake. If you want to ice the sides too, go for it.

Top with the fresh strawberries, and a sprinkling of crushed meringue if using. I guess that does make it deserving of the name Eton Mess cake, afterall.