Happy first day summer! The sun is shining, the leaf curler caterpillars are dangling from the trees, friends are meeting on sunny patios for icy beverages, having great conversation and giving away eggs (thank you @Super_Su!).

Not regular eggs either. These are beautiful farm fresh eggs which I am sure were laid by the prettiest chickens in Alberta. Look carefully, some are blue and green! The city girl in me wants to know how a robin mated with a chicken to come up with a blue egg… but I have been assured (perhaps comforted) that robins and chickens are not going at it behind the coop. And I’m sure someone out there sighing deeply and rolling their eyes and wants to leave a comment that chickens don’t need to “go at it” in order to lay an egg for breakfast. I don’t know about these things. Let’s leave it a mystery for now.

Now the thing is, I went to Seba Beach a few weeks ago and popped in at the farmers market. I came home with a dozen farm fresh eggs from Nature Spring Farm. We love our eggs Michael and I do, but two dozen is a bit much. What to do?

Sponge cake.

I could hear Mom’s voice in my head from ages ago…. “If you ever have a lot of eggs to use up, make a sponge cake”. So I did. It takes six eggs. And a lot of stamina.

If you have a modern kitchen you probably have a Kitchen Aid mixer you bought at Costco, which cracks and separates the eggs for you, beats yolks to a buttery yellow froth, self cleans, then beats whites to stiff peaks. I don’t have that luxury. I used my little electric hand mixer quite successfully, but it took away 10 MINUTES OF MY LIFE. I am kidding. Not about the 10 minutes, but I went in to a sort of trance, occasionally snapping out of it when the thought of the hand-mixer slipping and chewing through my fingers would pop in my head.

The recipe I used is in my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. There are many recipes on the net.

But what does one do, once one has baked a sponge cake? You make a Victoria Sponge. That’s what you do. And here’s how:

Find a sponge cake, slice it, put a nice smear of raspberry or strawberry jam on half, fill with fresh whipped cream, and add another slice of sponge cake. If you want to get all fancy-schmancy, dust with powdered sugar. Serve with…… ?  Tea of course!