Next Sunday is Mother’s Day, which I am sure has not escaped your attention. How will you celebrate? Orchids? Perfume? Chocolates? Lunch at her favourite restaurant? Perhaps something more personal, something you have made yourself? A glorious cake might be the answer, and I have the perfect recipe.

The past winter was long, cold and dreary, and I found myself on several occasions at the end of a week gathering together any eggs left over, checking how much butter I had, and then seeing what was left in the way of nuts, fruit, cream and other ingredients, and thus the Saturday cake was born.

I’m afraid it has very quickly become a fixture, in both kitchens, here and in London. Indeed, as I was getting used to my new kitchen overlooking the Gozo channel, baking a cake is one of the first things I did.

I had brought a few very basic bits of equipment in my hand luggage, which did not include scales. A 150 gram yoghurt pot was just the thing. A classic Victoria sponge is based on equal quantities of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, so the yoghurt pot is used to measure the flour and sugar. Fortunately, butter packs are marked in 25 or 50 gram sections, which removes the guesswork, as does the knowledge that a medium egg, out of its shell weighs about 50 grams.

For a mixing bowl I used a saucepan and for a baking tin, a very old rectangular metal ice tray from a 1960s American fridge, minus the plastic insert divider. My first cake was filled with ricotta and marmalade from the lady next door who makes the best marmalade in Gozo.

After that, I used sultanas and pine nuts for the plainer cakes, and kept the idea of the ricotta filling, as this is far less rich than butter cream, but just as good, as anyone knows who enjoys an authentic Sicilian cassata.

In fact, it was the cassata which led me on to my other cake experiments, and this has become my fancy cake of choice. It is a most versatile recipe and is the one I recommend for a Mother’s Day cake.

And if you have no time for baking, I recommend the cassata siciliana at Café Reale in Xagħra.

Variations:

The classic cassata has pale green marzipan topping, originally made with pistachios, but now invariably made with almond paste tinted green. I make a spring-like version with crystallised violets for decoration which look pretty against the pale green.

For a saffron and lemon cake, infuse a generous pinch of saffron in two tablespoons of boiling water and use it for both cake and marzipan, if using the latter. Grate lemon zest into the sponge mixture and use lemon juice for the water icing.

For a Christmas cake, bake in a Christmas tree-shaped tin, colour the marzipan green and cut out tree decorations from crystallised fruit.

For a Valentine’s cake, proceed as for the rose cake described above, but bake the mixture in a heart-shaped cake tin.

Moving away from the cassata theme, you can use the same basic cake mix to produce very different cakes. The classic Victoria sponge is split and filled with raspberry jam and whipped cream, and topped with sifted icing sugar.

To make a chocolate cake, substitute two rounded tablespoons of cocoa for the same volume of flour. To decorate this, I would use a chocolate butter cream inside and melted chocolate on top.

To make a coffee and walnut cake, substitute 50 grams chopped walnuts for 50 grams flour, and cold espresso coffee for the milk. Use coffee butter cream to fill the cake. Mix a little espresso with sifted icing sugar to make the water icing to finish it perfectly.

For today’s rose petal cake, I flavoured the ricotta with a little rosewater, a teaspoon of which I also added to the cake batter, and mixed in a spot of red food colouring to tint the filling pink. I also tinted some marzipan a similar pink before rolling it out to cover the cake.

The glaze is icing sugar mixed with lemon juice until you have a pouring consistency. The trick is to quickly cover the cake with this in one go so that it dries smooth. The delicate pink marzipan will show through its veil of water icing. Crystallised flowers can be used for further decoration, or shapes cut out of crystallised fruit.