Union Jack Cake - Celebrating 20 Years in Britain

Ever since the 20 year anniversary of the date I arrived in the UK with my mother and sister has been looming, I knew that I wanted to do something special to mark the occasion. And what better way to do this, than dedicating a cake to the emblem of the country that helped to inspire and nurture my love of baking! Britain has given me so many opportunities of things to do and try out, and surely, the great British love of baking has to be one of the most prominent ones.

There have been a few Union Jack cake recipes knocking around this year, since this has been a "Jubilympic" year, but this one from the Great British Bake Off book seemed like the most precise and well planned out. In fact, it was a gargantuan recipe that was way beyond anything I'd previously attempted before. As you can see from the photo, the cake was huge, weighing almost 2 kg and exceeding the size of my largest dishes, forcing me to serve it on an oven baking tray (!)

This image is attempting to show the sheer volume of the total cake mix, only just avoiding overspill in my 5 L bowl. The photo was attempting to show the mixing with my wooden spoon, but it seems it has been lost in the ether (prizes go to those who can spot its location on the right, covered in cake batter)
The appeal of this particular recipe though, was its detailed instructions, down to mathematical precision, which made me confident that it wouldn't flop apart like previous recipes I had tried. Firstly, the cake mix had to be split into three separate brownie pans after being coloured red and navy:

I have to say, that although I bought a multipack of foil tray bakes to help me with this, it wasn't exactly wide enough for the red sponge, so I caved in and bought a Silverwood Loose-bottomed Traybake pan. I was sceptical, and it certainly wasn't cheap, but it did live up to its name. The red sponge baked so evenly, without the burnt edges and soft, domed centres you often get with the cheaper baking trays. It didn't require any trimming at all, which is more than I can say for the navy sponges, that required a lot of work!

It was so beautifully uniform, even Sam noticed the difference! (and that's really saying something). I have to say that despite the price tag, I may consider investing in a few more in future, since it really does seem to deliver on all the promises.
Cutting the blue sponges into the required height and width resulted in many sponge offcuts (much to Sam's delight). The trickiest part of this step was probably the cutting of the navy sponge strips diagonally, and then lifting the pieces into place, securing them with butter cream as the mortar for the building blocks. However, since the cake was so large, it was much thicker and sturdier than my previous smaller cake recipes, so all of the pieces went in easily to the right place, without any cracking.
After assembly, it was draped in ready-to-roll icing:

Before the final step, trimming off the edges. If you wanted, you could cover the ends with some extra icing too, to make a hidden design cake, but I cut off the ends to make a neat edge, like in a Battenburg cake. Overall, I was quite pleased with the results, as the design seemed to be fairly uniform, as you could see the Union Jack running through all the slices:

The guests we had round seemed to enjoy it too!

This is a great example of what you can achieve when you follow a carefully planned out recipe, step-by-step, word for word. It pays to be mathematical sometimes!