Pomegranate & Lemon Cake

I love summer birthdays. You can celebrate outside, invite endless people and sit all night long next to the bonfire and watch the heavens and the stars. Easy guess - my birthday falls in winter :-(
But my good friend just had her birthday and so I worked the summer directly into her birthday cake.

As the core removal of pomegranates raises questions over and over again, here my try which hopefully leaves the kitchen in it's original colors:
1. Use a ripe fruit. This tastes much sweeter and more aromatic and doesn't make half the mess.
2. Roll the pomegranate (not yet cut) with your open hand on the counter top and put some pressure on it so that the seeds inside become loose.
3. Cut the fruit into two halves. Put a mesh on a small bowl and lay the pomegranate on top, then put over the inside to the outside and remove carefully the seeds. Collect the juice in the bowl.

This recipe makes a sponge cake of about 7 inches (18cm).

For the cage:
10 oz. wheat flour (250 g)
1 tablespoon starch
1 tablespoon manihot starch (available on Amazon or Asian food shops)
1/2 sachet baking powder
4 oz. raw cane sugar (100 g)
2 sachets vanilla sugar
1 pinch of salt
rind of a lemon
3 fl .oz. oil (80 ml)
2 tablespoons soy yoghurt, unsweetened
6 fl. oz mineral water, unsweetened (160 ml)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 pomegranate

Mix the flour, starch, baking powder, sugar, salt and lemon rind in a bowl. Add oil, water, yoghurt and lemon juice and stir everything nicely. Remove the seeds of the pomegranate like described above and add them as well.

Grease a 7 inch baking tin and pour in the dough. Bake at 340°F (170°C) (circulation) for about 50-60 minutes. After about 15 minutes cut the cake one inch deep alongside. Leave the cake to cool in the tin, then remove it carefully and ice with sugar powder or colored glazing.

You can download the pattern for the pennant-chain here. Have fun!