A couple weeks ago I made five jars of strawberry jam…awesome huh? Well, it would have been, had I managed to make proper jam, but alas, somehow mine became runny…very runny. I’ll blame it on overly juicy fruit, totally unrelated to my technical prowess – because I rock at making jam (well usually – see here).

So runny is my homemade jam that its realistically just liquid strawberry with a few chunks of fruit – think Macca’s strawberry topping for sundaes. But rather than being deterred by my liquid strawberry concoction, I began to think of other ways which I could use my unspreadable jam.

So I made a sponge cake – old fashioned, simple sponge. Delicious. Then I made a butter cream icing – easy, done in two minutes. To the icing, I added the liquid jam. Really, it was a bit of an experiment to see if I could put my failed jam to use – I hate wasting food unnecessarily. It worked! I actually think you could use normal everyday jam for this recipe too, just heat it up in the microwave a little to make more pliable, more like my failure.

So, the moral of the story? Don’t automatically assume a failure is a failure – think a little outside the box and you may just surprise yourself.

Serves 10

Sponge cake with strawberry jam icing

The list:

225gm self-raising flour
225gm raw caster sugar
225gm butter, at room temperature
4 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
75gm butter, softened (for icing)
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 Tbs milk
3 Tbs liquid jam (or normal jam if you managed to make yours the right way)
4 strawberries, finely sliced

The method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
2. Measure all the ingredients into a large bowl.
3. Mix all of the ingredients using a electric whisk.
4. Pour the mixture into a non-stick 22cm tin.
5. Place in the oven until golden brown, 15-25 minutes.
6. Cool on a wire rack before icing.
7. Using an electric mixer, beat remaining butter and icing sugar in a bowl until pale. Add milk, beating constantly until combined. Then slowly add the jam until pink and combined.
8. Ice cake and arrange fresh strawberries on top.

Enjoy!

Simple and easy cake to make

Finding inspiration after a recipe went wrong