little queenie - strawberry buttermilk sponge cake

little queenie - strawberry buttermilk sponge cake

• 9 Feb 2026

February 14 was always a special day in our household, not because it was Valentine's Day but because it was my Grandma Edie's birthday. Grandma and I would go shopping together and for a treat we would have morning tea in the McDonnell and East cafe, secreted in the Ladies Department and we always had a slice of sponge cake usually topped with passionfruit and cream. Grandma is long gone but in honour of her birthday, I thought I'd bake her a cake and of course it had to be a sponge cake. 

Nadine Ingram is the owner of Flour and Stone, a cult Sydney bakery. Last year I borrowed a copy of Love Crumbs, her second book, from the library. The cakes all looked lovely, but many of the recipes were very complicated with multiple steps or required hard to find ingredients. 'Little Queenie' caught my eye because at it's heart it's a sponge cake filled with berries and cream. Honestly, is there a better cake partnership than that? Little Queenie does require some special ingredients such as freeze dried strawberries, pink peppercorns and hibiscus flowers. Freeze dried strawberries are sold in my local supermarket but the pink peppercorns and hibiscus flowers used to flavour the strawberry compote are not. In the end I found and purchased them both online. 

Here's the recipe for you, written in Nadine's inimitable style, which makes a 17-cm cake. For all my recipes, I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C. If you'd like to make a towering 20-cm cake, then double the ingredients for the cake and you'll need 50% more of the compote, filling and decorations. 

Little Queenie - strawberry buttermilk sponge
Buttermilk sponge
3 eggs, separated
90g caster sugar
¼ tsp cream of tartar
75g plain flour
15g cornflour
1/2 tsp baking powder
12g unsalted butter
50ml buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla paste

Strawberry compote
¾ tbs dried mint
Scant ½ tsp pink peppercorns, crushed
4 cardamom pods, cracked
65g caster sugar
1 lemon, zested
3 dried hibiscus petals
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
250g ripe strawberries, hulled

Mascarpone filling
50g room temperature cream cheese

100g mascarpone
125g cream
60g Greek yoghurt
40g caster sugar
¾ tsp vanilla paste

To decorate
1 fresh egg white 
6 mint sprigs
50g caster sugar
½ tbs crushed cardamom pods

15g freeze dried strawberries

1 tsp cracked pink peppercorns 

5 dried hibiscus petals

Buttermilk sponge
Preheat the oven to 180°C, conventional. Grease and line 2 x 17 cm cake tins with baking paper and set them aside. I prepare all the ingredients before I start whipping the eggs for the sponge, that way, folding the sponge can happen swiftly and there is no delay in putting the sponge in the oven.

Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, but don't start whipping just yet. The egg yolks can be set to one side in a small bowl next to the stand mixer, just give them a little whisk with a fork for now. Combine the caster sugar with the cream of tartar in a small bowl and set beside the mixer. Sift the flours and baking powder together twice then set them to one side, being sure to leave the sieve nearby also.

Melt the butter in a saucepan then turn off the heat. Add the buttermilk and vanilla paste, allowing them to warm slightly in the residual heat of the pan.

Now you can whip the egg whites. Begin on high speed to create volume until you see soft ribbons starting to form, then reduce the speed to medium. Gradually add the sugar mixture to the meringue, 1 tablespoon at a time, leaving 10 seconds between each addition until all the sugar has been incorporated. Beat the meringue for a further 1 minute to allow the sugar to dissolve fully and create a more stable meringue base for the sponge. This will ultimately contribute to the height and fluffiness of the finished sponge, so be patient here.

Reduce the mixer speed to low and, while still beating, trickle the egg yolks directly into the bowl, scraping the last of the egg yolk out with a spatula. Increase the speed to medium until you can see that all the egg yolk has combined with the meringue. This will take no longer than 10 seconds. Remove the bowl from the mixer and, using a spatula, make a couple of folds through the meringue, scraping all the way to the bottom of the bowl to ensure the eggs are fully incorporated. 

Sift half the flour evenly over the top of the sponge and fold through gently until all the flour is combined, then sift in the remaining flour and fold it through. Add approximately 1/3 cup of sponge batter to the saucepan with the buttermilk mixture, then gently fold them together using a spatula. This will create a fluffy cloud of buttermilk. Then fold the buttermilk cloud back through the sponge until everything is well combined and hopefully still lovely and fluffy.

Divide the sponge between the prepared tins and smooth the tops ever so slightly with a palette knife. Place the tins immediately into the centre of the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Check the sponges at 18 minutes; they will be ready when the middle springs back slightly when pressed with your finger. Remove the tins from the oven and allow them to sit for only 2 minutes before slipping the sponges out onto wire cooling racks. This step prevents the sponges from shrinking around the edges.

Strawberry compote
Locate a deep baking tray in preparation for roasting the strawberries. While the sponges are cooling, combine the mint, peppercorns and cardamom together in a bowl. I find the most effective way to do this is in a spice grinder, but you could also use a pestle and mortar. Add this to the sugar along with the lemon zest, hibiscus petals and the seeds from the vanilla bean. Toss the strawberries in a large bowl with the sugar mixture and spread evenly over the base of the baking tray. Add the scraped vanilla bean and roast in the oven for 20 minutes, giving the tray a little shake halfway through to distribute the syrup. Remove the strawberries from the oven and allow to cool in the tray.

Mascarpone filling
Place the room temperature cream cheese in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat until smooth. Swap the attachment to the whisk and add the remaining ingredients to the bowl. Beat everything together to combine. Using a spatula, scrape down to the bottom of the bowl to check that all the cream cheese has been incorporated, then give one final whip until the cream is thick and fluffy. Remove the bowl from the mixer and set to one side.

To decorate
Lightly whisk the egg white, then brush the mint sprigs with a little egg white on both sides. Toss the leaves in the caster sugar and sprinkle with ground cardamom then place onto a baking paper lined plate. Leave out on the counter for the mint to dry then store in an airtight container. 

To assemble
Place one sponge onto your chosen serving platter, then spread half the mascarpone filling evenly over the top of the sponge all the way to the edges, or use a piping bag fitted with a #11 plain nozzle. Press half the strawberries from the compote into the surface of the filling bearing in mind that when you put the other sponge on top, the strawberries shouldn't protrude too high and prevent the sponge from sitting flat. Spoon some of the roasting syrup over the strawberries and trickle a little over the sides. Place the second sponge on top, then spread the sponge with the remaining mascarpone filling and remaining strawberries. Add the dried strawberries, hibiscus petals and mint, then finish with a few twists of cracked pink peppercorns.

This sponge, as with all sponges, should be eaten on the day it is baked. The filling and the strawberries can be prepared the day before, but the sponge must be baked the same day you are celebrating. There is no journey so arduous that a sponge should suffer being baked yesterday for.

We followed Nadine's advice and ate the sponge cake the day it was baked and the cake was a triumph!

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian