Baking gurus - good cake for 80th birthday?

[BellaOfTheBalls]

Big family do for a relatives 80th birthday next week & I have said I will make the cake. I'm a fairly confident baker but don't have a lot of utensils e.g piping nozzles etc. My specifics are:

• Needs to feed a crowd (there are 20 of us going), so was thinking of doing a tall cake with several layers rather than a great big one.
• has to be made with gluten free flour, which can make cakes quite dry.
• must be suitable for pregnant women, no raw egg (does this rule out Italian meringue frosting? Or does the sugar syrup cook the egg?)
• must look the business! Needs to impress as it will be focal point of very large dinner.

In my head I had a 3-4 layer vanilla sponge (with a vanilla syrup to stop it being too dry), Italian meringue frosting swirled on with a palette knife & topped with fruit half dipped in chocolate.

Any suggestions gratefully received!

Hi Bella - try some of the gluten free cake mixes - sainsburys has some in the 'free from' section - they do vanilla and they really are very good.

Have you done gluten free baking before? The cakes can be very crumbly, hence the cake-mix suggestion. When we tried a mix the texture was great, light and not crumbly at all.

I'd avoid any uncooked meringue - don't know if it's cooked as I do egg free baking, but the Ener-G egg replacer has a recipe for meringue topping on the back of the box. Why not go for a buttercream if the meringue proves to be a no-no.

Sounds delicious. Good luck and if you can't get a mix, you'll need can't ham gum or similar - lots of gf cake recipes online too.