Raspberry, Rose and Turkish Delight Cake.

As a huge fan of The Great British Bake Off, I was giddy with excitement when Laura and Shannon proposed The Great Blogger Bake Off. The idea is simple enough; every Tuesday we bake something relevant to the weekly theme on GBBO, then on Wednesday we share our posts and take a selfie of ourselves eating our bakes whilst watching the show. You can follow #TheGreatBloggerBakeOff to keep up with the project and see everyone else's bakes, and Laura even set up a Facebook page where we can all share our posts. It's uncompetitive - we just want to see lots of yummy recipes being shared!
The first week is cake, so I decided to tart up a victoria sponge cake with some of my favourite flavours - raspberry and rose. The finish was a little messy, but I think it has it's charm, and it tasted pretty amazing if I do say so myself! Keep reading if you fancy baking your own...
The method -
Preheat your oven to 180°C and grease/line one 7 inch cake tin, and one 9 inch cake tin. Sieve the dry cake ingredients (see below) into a large bowl, then chuck in the rest of the ingredients. Mix on a high setting until the mixture is pale and fluffy. Divide half the mixture between the two cake tins, and bake in the middle of the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden and firm. Remove the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool on a wire rack. Grease/line the tins again, and divide the remaining mixture between them. Bake as before.
To make the topping, carefully dice the cubes of turkish delight into small pieces, and toss them in icing sugar to stop them sticking together. Blend the mascarpone to soften it, adding the icing sugar to sweeten. Add the rose water and chopped turkish delight and mix evenly.
Once cooled, sandwich the larger cakes together with a layer of seedless raspberry jam. To keep them in place, skewer the top evenly with three cocktail sticks. Top the cake with a layer of mascarpone topping, and decorate with an evenly spaced layer of raspberries and redcurrants. Place one of the smaller cakes on top, pressing down lightly until secured on the cocktail sticks. Sandwich the other small cake on top with a layer of jam, then decorate the top tier with the remaining mascarpone topping. Decorate with cubes of turkish delight, fresh roses/petals, and the remaining raspberries and redcurrants.