Butterfly effect cake (No. 1)

We were invited to a birthday party, and I was to bring the cake. The birthday girl is a lovely and lively woman who's demeanor reminds me of a butterfly, so I had planned to make a two tier birthday cake with lots of butterflies flying around it.

The butter flies were made and ready for the cake, when the birthday party was cancelled..... and so I decided to make a cake for my colleagues - a Victoria Sponge, with lemon/clementine syrup and soft nougat:

My American and British friends seem to prefer Victoria sponge-type cake covered in royal icing or fondant, where as the Danes appear to like layered cakes with custard, cream and marzipan. Personally, I think Victoria sponge cake is often quite boring; dry and without much taste. So the butterfly effect cake was really an experiment in trying to get a Victoria sponge to actually taste of something:

The sponge is made of:
250 gram of caster sugar whisked white with 4 eggs.
250 gram of melted butter is added to the boule. Stir well and add
250 gram of flour + 2 table spoons of baking powder.
Pour into a well greased baking tray and bake for approx. 40 min at 175 degrees.

Make a syrup:
I had a handfull of clementines and a lemon at hand, leaving me with approx. 200 ml juice. Put 150 grams of sugar in a pot. Heat and add the juice while stirring. Turn the heat down and reduce the liquid.

Once the sponge was done, I took it out of the owen, let it sit for a few minutes to cool down, and then I cut it into three (horizontally).

The nougat was heated in a pot to make it runny (don't boil it!). The nougat will harden up, once its cooled down.

I poured 1/3 of the syrup over the bottom sponge, and added a think layer of each of the warm nougat, and placed the next sponge on top of that, and repeated the process until the last layer was soaked in syrup and the whole cake covered in nougat to give it a smooth surface.

Then I made a stiff royal icing (egg whites and icing sugar). Don't beat it as small air bobbles will form - and that's undesirable in royal icing. I added the colour and covered the cake, leave some royal icing for piping small flour on the cake...

A victoria sponge is very tasty made in this way, btw :-)