Gateau Moka aux Amandes

Mary says that this is one of her favourite coffee cakes, and that it looks spectacular too. It was Mum's birthday on Saturday, so I thought I would surprise her with this. I was a little disappointed with the final result, but it tasted ok, and Mum was pleased.
The recipe involves making a fatless sponge which only has three eggs, 100g sugar, and 75g of SR flour. My problem with this is that you have to make it in a 9in cake tin, and bake until it is well risen. The fact is that it is only going to rise a small amount if there is so little cake mixture in the tin. The result was quite disappointing, looking rather like a large pancake. I have come to the conclusion that I prefer a bit of fat in my sponges!
Once it was cool, I had to slice it and make "creme au beurre moka". For those of you following my blog, you may remember this icing from the mokatine recipe. It invoved dissolving sugar and heating to 107c  before adding to the egg yolks. This time I was well equipped with my new sugar thermometer (Great British Bake off here I come!), so I knew that I had got the sugar just right. This icing still remains a pain to make, and I am not convinced that it is so much better than butter icing. Also, I found that the amount given in the recipe was not enough to fill and cover the cake, as well as pipe rosettes on the top. As you can see there are no rosettes!
The taste was nice, and the adults enjoyed it. We gave it 8.0. It was pleasant enough, but if I was making a coffee cake, I think I would go for a simpler recipe.