Katherine's Victoria Sponge

The classic victoria sponge - so recognisable in taste, the pressure was on to ensure the perfect bake - so here goes...

I've obviously baked this before, and having always used Delia Smith's recipe from 'Delia's Complete Illustrated Cookery Course - Classic Edition' (a firm favourite of the Mother!), and found no issues with the recipe, I don't usually deem it necessary to deviate. However, I thought I'd use my new cookery book - 'Mary Berry's Complete Cookbook' and give this a test drive (I did have Delia on hand to compare and contrast).

Firstly I measured everything out into one bowl - something I don't usually do, as I usually do it a step at a time, but it seemed to work just fine. The tweak I did make though was cutting the butter up into small cubes before adding to the mixture - a tip I picked up for a celebrity chef programme (I think it may have been Lorraine Pascale), as it helps combine the mixture quicker than one large lump.

I poured the mixture as evenly as possibe into the tins - and tapped them on the work surface (a Gordon Ramsey tip to release any air bubbles) and popped them in for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.
With a prod and a glance, I removed the cakes, and left them to cool in their tins, before removing and putting on a cooling tray.

Whilst they were cooling I got to work on the butter cream - a recipe handed down from the mother - so probably from a cookery magazine from yester year! I started off by creaming the butter and icing sugar together with a electric handwhisk (mod con that I thought I'd give a whirl) - I used Lorraine Pascale's tip of putting a clean tea towel over the top of the whisk and bowl to ensure the cloud of icing sugar didn't fill my kitchen - which worked a treat (thanks LP!). After getting the mixture going, I decided to get the trusty wooden spoon, and get creaming by hand - very strenuous work, but a light fluffy mixture was a happy result!

Once the sponges were cooled out of their tins, I spread the buttercream onto the bottom layer, and the Strawberry Jam on the other sponge, and quickly (whilst crossing everything and holding my breath) sandwiched the two sponges together! Added a strawberry 'garnish' and a dusting of icing sugar, and the taste test could commence!

My tasting panel was my housemate Jen - I served hers with a piping hot cup of tea, and she commented on the moistness of the sponge, and the nice flavours coming through. The others on my panel were colleagues at work, they commented on the flavours and thickness of the sponge, getting a varying of results - 8.5, and a 9.5 out of 10.

As I hadn't made this for a while, and had a bad experience with a Victoria Sponge at Jubilee (I don't like to talk about it!), I was pretty pleased with the result, although my even distribution of cake mix wasn't quite a success with one sponge slightly larger on one side.

(For my birthday soiree, I had an afternoon tea theme in the day and baked the sponge again, using the same recipe, and methods, and I am pleased to report, we had no wonky sponges! This time however, I whipped up some cream, and layered that with some strawberry jam for the filling, and topped the cake with more whipped cream and an array of fruit on top. It definitely was aesthetically pleasing! I also made some Mini Victoria Sponges and used the same recipe, but splitting them into 12 victoria sponge holes - a tin designed especially for this purpose (I was on a waiting list for this tin at Lakeland!!!) 6 Lemon Curd and Buttercream, and 6 Classic Victoria Sponge with Strawberry Jam and Buttercream - both a resounding success!)

Anna's Victoria Sponge.

I chose my recipe from the tried and tested Be-Ro baking book. My mum gave me a copy of this book which she has used to make so many of her delicious cakes, so I thought it would be a failsafe option! The recipe is really simple and easy to remember. It’s basically 100g of everything, plus 2 eggs. I have attempted to make a Victoria sponge a couple of times before and although the lightness of the cake has improved I have not been very successful in getting the cake to rise.

My top tip for cake making, which I learned from a day spent on a baking course, is to cream the eggs and sugar so that the mixture turns from a yellow colour to white with an extremely soft texture. This is meant to create a much lighter texture and it really makes a difference!

So, was I successful in my bid to get my cake to rise? Well, sort of!! This time I actually managed to make a cake that I could cut into two halves – so maybe it was successful!? I think I would have liked it to have been a little bigger – I will work on that for next time! I finished my cake off with butter cream, strawberry jam and icing sugar dusted on top.

I was pleased with my cake, but next time I will get it to raise more! It tasted really good and it was nice and light inside. My tasting team (aka my boyfriend) gave it thumbs up, although I think this might have been slightly biased. I will definitely make this cake again and I will keep you posted on my progress!  

Jess's Blueberry Victoria Sponge

This cake was made as a joint birthday cake for mum and boyfriend.. no pressure. I wanted it to be blueberry themed, to give it a bit of extra flavour and colour. It ended up being rather jam packed!!

I used a basic Victoria Sponge recipe from the BBC Food website which was very straight forward. I then made a buttercream icing, coloured it blue (which turned out to be slightly more like green). Once both cakes had cooled, I added blueberry jam to the lower tier, and spread the buttercream on top of both parts.

On the underneath cake, i added chopped strawberries and whole blueberries, and positioned the top later on top. i then covered the top layer of icing with blueberries, and to add a bit of extra colour, added some Cadburys "Snowball" chocolates.

I would definately make this cake again. It was so simple, and the end result was exactly what i wanted,  it looked good and tasted great. It wasnt exactly the neatest cake of all time (!!), but it was colourful and  looked fun!

Felicity's Victoria Sponge...with a twist

Being a bit of a baking novice I reached straight for the Good Housekeeping recipe book and used their tried and tested recipe for the 'perfect Victoria sponge'. Nothing unusual there.

In the beginning there was flour...

Usually I lump all the ingredients in together but this time I followed the recipe by the book; creaming the butter and sugar together, followed by beating in the eggs and finally folding in the flour. And all by hand! Harder work than I first thought. Good job I'd been to the gym this week in preparation. Jokes.

Ye olde fashioned scales

All was looking good and they went into the oven. Now the tricky part - waiting. I've never been one for patience so I peeked and prodded for 20 minutes until they finally came out looking golden brown and cooked through (the knife test - thanks Mrs Stringer!).

I went for a traditional butter icing - couldn't resist a bit of pink food dye - and Mum Pointer's homemade blackcurrant jam for the filling. And to top it off a few dusted hearts.

And the 'twist'? A sprinkling of lemon zest and juice in the mixture and icing to give it a bit of a kick.

And voila:

My tasting panel (the Pointer family) gave it the thumbs up. And a tip from mum - maybe a few degrees cooler for the oven next time.

Hannah's Victoria Sandwich ... in all her glory

The Victoria Sandwich .... a British classic and a great first bake to get us off the starting block. When searching for my recipe of choice, I came across a lot of variations but decided to stick to the traditional recipe but with the addition of buttercream icing.

I used the recipe from Mary Berry's Baking Bible and then found the buttercream recipe from the BBC Good Food website.

The recipe was easy to follow and involved just putting all of the ingredients in to one bowl, so was definitely a fool-proof recipe.

When it came to pouring the mixture in to the cake tins, I was trying out a new product I'd bought a while ago called Cake Release from Lakeland and it's meant to act as a substitute for greaseproof paper/butter. The cakes came out of the oven looking golden brown and smelling amazing!

However, the real test would be how easy it was for the cakes to come out, the first one popped out really easily, but the second one stuck to the bottom of the pan a bit and I had to call for re-inforcements to come and assist so that it didn't crack. The Cake Release didn't leave any grease on the cake and it could have been that I didn't use enough of it for it to work properly, so i'll use it again before writing it off! Once cooled I took the cakes out of the tins on to a clean tea towel, before turning them on to the wire racks (a tip from Mary Berry herself to stop the cakes being dented by the wire rack).

I let the cakes cool down completely, so that the buttercream wouldn't melt once applied. The buttercream was easy to work with and after putting 3 spoonfulls on to one side of the cake (the side with the slight hole in it), I used a palette knife to smooth it down. This was then followed by raspberry jam and applied in the same way.

The other half was then lifted on top and finished with a spinkling of caster sugar and a few raspberrys for decoration, resulting in my Victoria Sponge displayed on an Emma Bridgewater cake stand.

The tasting committee (my slightly bias boyfriend) rated it 10 out of 10 appearance wise and 10 out of 10 for taste, so a big thumbs up, but realistically how wrong can a Victoria Sandwich go? (...luckily for me you couldn't notice the hole that the cake tin left!)

Overall I would recommend the recipe and will definitely be using it again

Sarah's Victoria Sponge

This recipe is from Waitrose and always works well (so far at least!). This time I used the zest, and juice from a lemon in the butter cream. 

So, what do we know about the Victoria Sponge?

So, what do we know about the Victoria Sponge?

Well, we are all aware that the Victoria Sponge is a Quintessential British Baking Classic – a tasty tea time treat steeped in tradition, with recipes passed through the generations.

But why is it called the ‘Victoria’ Sponge we hear you cry....

Quite simply, the name Victoria Sponge was given to this cake because it was Queen Victoria’s favourite Afternoon Tea accompaniment!

Over the years, the Victoria Sponge may have seen tweaks and innovative twists to its traditional recipe – double cream as opposed to buttercream, and varying jam fillings such as; lemon curd and raspberry. Despite these twists and tweaks the Classic Victoria Sponge is still a firm favourite on today’s Afternoon Tea Menus.

The Classic Victoria Sponge is two sponges sandwiched together with buttercream and strawberry jam, and a light dusting of icing sugar. However, the WI do not recognise this as the traditional recipe, instead, the recipe that they recognise is simple raspberry jam filling with a dusting of caster sugar.

So, let's see what baking delights we have...