This recipe is the only page I have left from a cookbook that must have been published by Marks & Spencer 45 years ago. The theme was cooking for the deep freeze and its author Mary Berry. No wonder it is such a good recipe and one I have used many times to make birthday cakes, most memorably when my daughter was 21 and I took a cake out to Berkeley where she was studying.

I made it again this weekend but, as I no longer have two sandwich tins, made one big cake and halved the measures for the icing. I allowed an extra five minutes of cooking time and it worked well.

It seems I am not the only person for whom this has been a special recipe. Caroline Hughes contacted me, delighted to find a readable version, her own having suffered many years of splatter as the picture shows: