Classic Victoria Sponge

Hello friends,

As we are in Wimbledon week, what better cake to celebrate with than the classic Victoria Sponge, with a cream and strawberries filling. This is a beautiful looking cake and an ideal desert to the countless BBQs and outdoor meals as we celebrate the coming of summer.

Ingredients:

175g softened butter
175g caster sugar
175g self raising flour
3 duck eggs
250ml double cream
1 tbsp icing sugar
1 tub of strawberries, halved

Method:

This makes an 18 inch sandwich cake. Preheat oven to 180C/ 170C fan assisted.

In a bowl beat together the sugar and butter until it is pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well. The mixture may separate a little after the eggs are added, but this will come together as you beat it.

Fold in the flour gently, and pour the batter into two greased sandwich tins, then put into the oven for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven when golden and allow to cool fully.

Whilst cooling, whip the double cream until it forms peaks, then mix in the icing sugar to sweeten.

Chop up the strawberries, then when the cake is cool assemble by layering strawberries, cream and cake, then sprinkle a little extra icing sugar on the top of the cake to finish.

Serve with some extra cream if you are feeling naughty and enjoy in the sun!

Comments

After Eight minis by Fantasy Cakes

Father Christmas clearly knows me well, as under the tree I had a new cake recipe book waiting; Fantasy Cakes by Angela Romeo and it is such a treat for the eyes to browse, and stomach for the wonderful cakes you could bake. It is a very clever book in that it has the standard cake recipes at the start which are used throughout the book. These so far have been so simple to throw together, which is very handy as I can leave the baby playing for 10 minutes to whip the cake up. You can order the book here , and I highly recommend it if you want to try some beautiful centre pieces or show stoppers. The first cake I tried is the After Eight minis, great as all the family were round to gobble up the end result. This After Eight recipe took a while to assemble and create the individual elements however they can all be done in advance and individually rather than sitting down for a good couple of hours stretch. I had to alter the recipe slightly as I ran out of self raising fl...

Pasteils de nata - custard tarts

Pastry week on the Great British Bake Off saw Paull Hollywood set custard tarts as the technical challenge and I thought I would give them a go, seeing as I have never attempted them before! I own Paul's cookbook which has the recipe in, and it can also be found on the GBBO website. These two recipes vary slightly - in the book Paul doesn't make the rough puff pastry but uses shop bought (which I would normally do.) This being a Bake Off challenge though I decided to use the recipe they followed in the tent. The result - delicious buttery pastry filled with golden creamy custard. I ate 3 in one sitting! The tarts are quite fiddly and leaving the pastry to cool between rolling is essential to get the decent lamination and signature swirl on the bottom, so you will need to set aside a good couple of hours in total. As a side note, I found that I had a lot of left over custard - either I didn't make my tarts big enough or the recipe is rather generous with the por...

Bourbon Chocolate Brownies

There seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment for brownies with all kinds of sweets and biscuits added to the top to give an extra dimension to these absolute classic bakes. Doing the rounds on Instagram which caught my eye were Bourbon brownies, in particular Frances Quinn's version (Former GBBO winner). Her food imagination and photography is always beautiful and well worth checking out. I have used my own brownie recipe which combines cocoa and melted dark chocolate topped with neat rows of Bourbons, making a brownie which perfectly compliments a good cup of tea. Time to get dunking! Ingredients: 220g butter 180g caster sugar 150g light muscovado sugar 50g cocoa powder 50g dark chocolate (70%) 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 eggs 120g plain flour 1 packet of Bourbons - I used 13 ontop of my batter, but you can add more or less depending on how you want your brownies to look. Method: Preheat your oven to 180C/ 160C fan assisted and line a brownie tin. In ...

Freckled Kirsty

Search This Blog