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Serves 8

225g Butter – at room temp

225g Caster Sugar

225g Self Raising Flour

Vanilla essence (I use 2 x Bertollini Vanilla sachets.)

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

4 Eggs

Milk – to loosen batter

Rose Jam

Strawberry Jam

Whipping Cream

Icing Sugar for dusting

2 Strawberries – Sliced

Rose Petals

Pre heat oven to 180 degrees C.

Beat butter and sugar together in a bowl with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy.

Mix in eggs one by one, then vanilla essence, flour and baking powder.  If batter is too thick add a splash of milk to loosen.

Pour batter into a greaseproof paper lined / greased cake tin and bake for 20 – 25 minutes. You can tell when its ready by piercing the cake with a knife – if blade comes out clean, the cake is ready.

Leave to cool on rack once cooked through.

Slice cake through the middle and fill with jam and freshly whipped cream.

Sandwich cake halves together and decorate top with icing sugar, hearts formed from slices of fresh strawberries and rose petals.

For the jam I mixed my own strawberry jam and with a pot of Rose Jam, a souvenir from my visit to Istanbul.

The strawberry jam was made simply by boiling fresh strawberries for 20 minutes with an equal weight of jam sugar.  Once cooled, I mixed it with Rose Jam.

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