Make It Magical

Meet our star turn for Christmas 2020, a towering beauty of gently spiced, soft sponge, layered with fluffy vanilla buttercream and caramel, adorned with glittering sprinkles. We think you’ll agree, this cake is something special

- Cassie Best

Sprinkle & spice caramel fault-line cake

Fault-line cakes have been a hot trend in 2020, and with our easy step-by-step recipe, you can create your own for a festive centrepiece. It’s worth investing in some special baking equipment to make this cake (see our tips, right), and in finding suitably glitzy sprinkles.

SERVES 18-20

PREP 50 mins plus cooling and chilling

COOK 1 hr

MORE EFFORT V sponges only

• 200ml whole milk

• 4 tbsp golden syrup

• 300ml vegetable oil, plus extra for the tins

• 500g plain flour

• 4 tsp baking powder

• 500g light brown soft sugar

• 2 tsp ground cinnamon

• 4 small pinches of ground cloves

• 400ml buttermilk (if you can’t get buttermilk, use 300g Greek yogurt mixed with 100ml milk)

• 4 medium eggs

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

For the buttercream icing and caramel layers

• 500g slightly salted butter, softened

• 1kg icing sugar

• 2 tsp vanilla extract splash of milk (optional)

• 150g canned caramel

For the decoration

50g sprinkles (we used a mixture of gold, bronze, and metallic purple, red and turquoise – a mixture of different colours and shapes will give the best result), plus extra for the top (optional)edible gold decorating pen, or edible gold lustre mixed with a few drops of clear spirit (such as vodka)