If you ever need to produce a celebration cake, this is it!

Serves 8-10

Ingredients:

Sponge cake

• 130g unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs
• 2⅓ cups self-raising flour
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup milk

To decorate 

• 1/3 cup raspberry jam, warmed slightly
• 1 ½ cup icing sugar
• 30g butter, softened
• ½ cup raspberries (fresh or frozen, defrosted)
• 3-5 tablespoons, boiling water
• 1 ½ cups coconut thread
• 300mls cream, whipped with one tbsp icing sugar

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 C fan bake. Grease two 20cm round cake tins and dust with flour.
2. Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, and mix until well beaten. Stir in the flour and salt then the milk and mix until just combined, being careful not to over-mix.
3. Divide the batter between the cake tins, one third in one and two thirds in another. Bake for 25 minutes or until they spring back when gently pressed. The thicker one will likely need 5-7 minutes more cooking time. Leave to cool for 12-15 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool completely. Cut tops off each sponge to level them if necessary, then split the thicker one into two layers.
4. Mix icing sugar, butter and half of the boiling water. Press the raspberries through a sieve to collect the juice and add this to the icing. Aim for a smooth, runny icing, adding more water or icing sugar as needed. Pour out onto a shallow dinner plate. Sprinkle coconut onto another dinner plate.
5. Roll the sides of each cake layer in the icing to get the cake sides evenly coated, then roll in the coconut to cover.
6. To assemble, place one sponge layer on a serving plate. Spread with jam, then dollop on whipped cream. Top with second sponge layer and repeat with jam and cream. Top with the final sponge layer. Spread the top with icing then sprinkle over coconut.
7. Chill for 30 minutes before ready to serve.
8. Use a serrated knife to cut and enjoy!

Nici’s note:

Feel free to use two store-bought sponges if you want to save time.

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Ed McKnight has been working in personal finance for a fair few years and although he typically tries to be encouraging when giving advice, he does have some more brutal truths to tell.

He joined Jack Tame to offer up the three brutally honest pieces of money advice that most Kiwis will need to hear.

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In the end, it was just over an hour.

Just over an hour between being asleep on the floor of Auckland hospital, to standing, bewildered under the delivery suite lights, helping to dress my newborn son.

Mava had been induced on Sunday – the scans had suggested that all was ok but that our baby was small for his age. We spent an oddly serene day waiting for the induction medication to kick in. They give you a dose every two hours until you go into labour but sometimes it takes a few hours to work and sometimes it takes days. It was actually lovely, in a way. Mava and I both read for hours in-between the doses. We went for coffee and a stroll in the domain, Mava constantly assessing baby’s every shift and every hint of a contraction.

My goodness, though, when it happened... it happened. Zero to one hundred. A blur.

I won’t labour you with all of the details but it’s become clear to me that there's a reason every parent has a birth story. It was surreal. It just felt like a week’s worth of crazy experiences happened in the space of fifteen minutes. It was beautiful, wild, traumatic, thrilling... it was animal. All these things.

Mava was incredible. I felt so proud of her, and yet so helpless at the same time.

And weirdly through it all, I felt calm. I’m not bragging. I’m not saying calmness was a good response – honestly I was probably just a bit stunned – and it turned out our son was too when he came out. They hurried him off and chucked him on the oxygen and he regained his colour. I took my cues from our amazing midwife and the other hospital staff. She wasn’t freaking out too much and so I didn’t either.

The scans were right – our son was small for his gestational age. But he what lacked in size he made up for in his capacity to feed. There can be no doubt he has inherited my skin tone, my hair colour, and my appetite. This morning is the longest I’ve been away from him in his life, but at five days old I know him well enough to know that right now he is probably feeding. Isn’t it incredible how instinct works? Out of the womb, almost blind, and yet he absolutely throws himself at the boob. Head back, mouth wide, latch! Who taught him that?!

A few random takeaways:

1) The placenta. Wow. That thing could feed a family of four.

2) We had three nights in hospital and a couple more in Birthcare afterwards. If our experience of the New Zealand healthcare system this week is anything to go by, it is being completely held together by migrant workers: Indians, Filipinos, Europeans, South Americans, Pasifika... they were fantastic. For all the justified concern over the health care system as a whole, we had a really positive experience and felt so grateful to the people working in what are often very tricky conditions.

3) Women's bodies, eh? To have the capacity to grow an entire human being, from his skinny little frog legs folded up at his belly, to his tiny little fingernails to the lightest fur on his pink little cheeks. To grow him, birth him, and then, having done it all, having done everything... to immediately switch to nourishing him day and night.

What can I tell you about our son? He’s got his mum’s eyes. He sucks his thumb. His first music was the Koln Concert and he made sure to stay up to watch Will Young and Tom Latham score centuries against Pakistan. His name will be finalised soon enough. When he’s bulked up a bit, he’s got a long list of visitors waiting to meet him, too.

After five nights away, yesterday I put our son in his carseat and drove him home. His older brother ran home from school and cuddled him on the couch. Through the madness and exhaustion of the week, running on caffeine, sugar, and love, we sat there together, a family. It was perfect.

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