Emily is my cousin’s daughter and always gets her cakes as presents from me. I have made several cakes for her in the past but this year I couldn’t think what to do? She’s at that in between age now where cartoon characters are uncool and she’s not quite old enough to be interested in D&G handbags and Jimmy Choos. So I had an epiphany. I would create a cake that involved as little actual work as was physically possible, something I could throw together in a couple of hours. Bang, wallop, done and dusted and in my bed by 10pm! And I reckoned sprinkles were the way to go since everyone is doing them so they’re on trend and, since I’d never made one before, I imagined they would be time efficient?! I mean, how hard can it be to throw a few hundreds and thousands at a cake anyway?!!! OH MY GOOD GOD, how wrong was I? Firstly, I thought I’d stick the buttercream covered cake in a dish to collect and contain the excess sprinkles… Except I didn’t have a dish large enough in the house. Soooo, I layed down sheets of kitchen roll to collect the excess sprinkles but I had no idea that a single sprinkle has the average trajectory of a long range cruise missile! I had no idea that the job of sticking sprinkles successfully to the sides of the cake took several attempts and the patience of a saint AND all the time I was doing this free range sprinkles were bouncing, by the dozen, all over the worktop and kitchen floor. Thankfully I had the foresight to purchase several jars of the little blighters and didn’t run short (only just). The clean up operation was epic! My kitchen looked like it had been hit by a sprinkle bomb. There were sprinkles on the floor, under the microwave, in the sink, under the mixers, under the table, chairs, fridge and one or two in my bra!!! I think I’ll be finding sprinkles 6 months from now! I finally rolled into bed at 2.30am and vowed, after all the trouble it had given me, I would share a photo. So here it is. The simplest, yet most time consuming cake I’ve ever made! Thank you. xx