Classic Victoria Sandwich Cake

Do you know, I was absolutely flabbergasted to discover that I have never blogged a recipe for a classic Victoria Sandwich cake? I still can't quite believe it. 

I have been making Victoria Sandwiches, also known as Victoria Sponge cakes, since I was about 8 years old!  It is one of my most vivid memories, walking into the living room of our house in Oakley, Basingstoke, proudly bearing my lovely Victoria Sandwich that I'd made (with the help of my Mum, of course!) for my Dad's approval and for us to have with a cup of tea.

How on earth has this stalwart of baking escaped from being included on Rhubarb & Ginger?  The answer is, I have no idea.  However, I shall now remedy this and my favourite recipe is set out below.  In fact, it is almost the same recipe as the Mary Berry Victoria Sandwich cake, the only differences being that I use 1 tsp of vanilla essence in the cake mix and always fill the cake with jam and cream (and sometimes, as in the latest one, with fresh fruit, too).

This recipe has never failed me and always turns out a lovely deep, moist sponge cake that is man enough to cope with the weight of the jam, cream and extra fruit as well as its other half, without collapsing at all.  It is so disappointing to have the bottom half of your cake flatten and compressed by the weight above it, so it is quite important to have a mix that can hold some weight!

It doesn't matter whether you use home made, the shop's best or a cheap as chips jam - they all work and this really is a cake to suit all pockets.  If you can't afford to use all butter, then by all means use whatever your budget will allow.  The flavour will be slightly different, but the cake will be just as well received and I bet there won't be much left!

So, be it an economy version or a ridiculously outrageous, filled with whipped cream and buckets of fruit version, I've never known this cake to be turned down.  It's as easy as winking to whip up - just bung it all in one bowl and whisk away and takes just a twinkling to bake.  In fact, the longest and most arduous part about this whole recipe is waiting for the cake to cool so that you can fill it and get stuck in!

What's this?  Well, for the first time ever, I've linked up with the 
Cook Blog Share's recipe linkup.   Hopefully, if you click
 on the following link you'll be taken to

the Easy Peasy Foodie blog, where you will find lots of new 

and interesting recipes to consider.  Yummy!

CLASSIC VICTORIA SANDWICH CAKE   (serves 8-12 slices)

Ingredients :

4 large eggs
225g caster sugar
225g self raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
225g butter, at room temperature, plus a little to grease the tins
1 tsp vanilla essence.

For the filling & decoration :

150g raspberry jam
300ml whipping cream
75-100g fresh or frozen raspberries, saving 4-5 whole, good raspberries for the top
1 tsp icing sugar.

Method :

Pre-heat your oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas 4.

Taking two 8 inch (20cm) sandwich tins (loose bottomed ones are great for this!), cut out a circle of baking parchment to sit in on the base.  Then, using the little dab of extra butter, grease the tins, lay the parchment in and grease the parchment.

Break the eggs into a large bowl (it's as well to break them individually into a cup, then tip them into the bowl, just in case one turns out to be a bit dodgy.  That way you don't lose all the eggs at once!) and give them a light mixing.  Add the sugar, flour, baking powder, butter and vanilla essence and set to the lot with a whisk.  Whisk until just combined - don't over-whisk or your sponge will turn rubbery.  The mixture should be what's known as a "dropping" consistency, which has nothing to do with what horses leave behind them and everything to do with how easily it falls from your spoon.

Decant half the mixture into each prepared cake tin and carefully level the contents.

Gently place the tins onto the centre shelf of your oven (don't lean one on the other, or you'll wind up with a wonky cake) and bake for 25 minutes.  Don't be tempted to open the door and peek at how they're doing, or turn your hand to some panel beating beside the oven while the cakes bake - as these things will guarantee to make your sponge drop and become a pancake.  You don't want that.

At the end of the 25 minutes, the cakes should be smelling delicious and (yes, you can look now) should be coming away from the edges of the tin.  If you give the centre a little press, the cake should spring back like an olympic trampolinist.

Take them out of the oven and place onto a wire rack for some 10 minutes, to just let them get over the change in circumstances and cool a little.  If you have loose bottomed cake tins, this is where they come into their own, as you can remove the cakes from the tins without fear of calamity.

If you are baking the cakes the day before you'll need them, leave them on the parchment paper for support and once they are totally cold, pop them into a freezer bag each.  They'll keep perfectly until the following day.

Otherwise, carefully remove the baking parchment once the cakes are totally cool and place one upside down on your cake plate.

Carefully smooth loads of jam over the surface of this cake, then whip up the cream and even more carefully smooth generous amounts of cream on top of the jam.  If you're going the whole hog and including raspberries (or other fruit), now is the time to embed it into the cream.  Add a little more cream on top of the fruit (to help the upper cake stick and stop it from entertaining any ideas of sliding off onto the floor) and oh so carefully add the second layer of cake - flat side down, baked side up.

Lastly, take a tea strainer and sieve a little icing sugar all over the top of your cake and add the few raspberries that you kept back for decoration.  (Provided your son hasn't eaten them, as mine very nearly did).

Take a photograph of your cake before you alert the family to the fact that it is ready to be eaten, because it's not going to be around for long!

Printable version

Today's dinner : An emergency Sicilian!

Son & heir's plans changed suddenly and instead of being out this evening, he and a friend were going to be in for dinner after all.  This meant that what we had planned to have - a night off from cooking, complete with prawn cocktail baguettes - was abandoned and I had to get thinking about what to make instead!

It had to be something easy, with not much preparation, as following on from a busy and slightly stressful day yesterday (yes, going out for lunch is stressful, these days), I knew I'd be feeling it today.

Good old pasta.  You can't go wrong with it, it's so easy to make - whatever you put with it!  I decided upon the Sicilian Pork Ragu with Chocolate that we all love.  All you need to prepare is an onion and some basil, so it was perfect.  You can find the recipe for this quick and stress-free lovely at http://jennyeatwellsrhubarbginger.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/sicilian-pork-ragu-with-chocolate-co.html

The ragu was a little wetter than usual, largely because the pan decided to act like Mount Vesuvius and send little super hot globules of sauce flying in all directions.  I'm really not sure why this one decided to do that and others haven't, but it made simmering the sauce virtually impossible.  I really must buy a splatter guard.  I don't really want to go and see the state my cooker is in!

Dessert was a shop-bought lemon tart with additional raspberries - and hubby went a bit mad with the squirty cream and sprinkles.  He reckons everything is made better by the addition of sprinkles.  He may even be right!

Strawberry & Raspberry Amaretto Gateau for the Jubilee Weekend

For ages, the Jubilee weekend was just something crepuscular and ephemeral that was likely to happen around us, but not really involve us, here at Eatwell Towers.  Right up until little more than a week beforehand, when I found myself being sucked in to the holiday vibe that was playing around the whole event.

It's not that I'm anti-royal (having worked for Historic Royal Palaces Agency for nearly ten years, that's highly unlikely), or have any antipathy towards the Jubilee in a Morrisey kind of way, it's just that it felt rather as though it was all happening in London and so didn't really affect us here in Dorset.

Sponge cakes look promising!

As the weekend got closer, I began to twig on to the fact that there was going to be quite a lot (for "quite a lot", read "huge amounts") of coverage on the t.v. which would probably be worth watching simply from a historical "I saw that" point of view.

I had, of course, known about the activity surrounding the Jubilee that the blogging world was devoting to the cause - but that wasn't anything new.  After all, there only has to be a "Green Pea Day" and out come all the blogs detailing green pea recipes, (mine amongst them, very often!) so it was only to be expected that there would be heaps of baking blogs going bonkers with cupcakes in the shape of corgis, crowns and all things royal.

Yes, very promising. Fingers crossed they cut okay!

My inner resistance towards being a sheep (apologies to everyone who feels they may fall into the sheepy category) was what was stopping me from scheduling in a big old Jubilee High Tea, with Charles & Camilla's favourite scones, Kate & Wills' favourite chocolate biscuit cake et al - and blogging about it.  So because of this inner battle of mine, this is why I wound up making an almost last minute whizz bang spiffingly enormous creamy and alcoholic gateau.  Yes, you'll find me at the back of the flock following on apologetically.

Well, in my own defence, it just didn't seem right to be a) on a Sunday, b) in June, c) in the televisual presence of royalty and d) following on from Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding, to have anything else except an enormous confection of cake, summer berries and a dash of alcohol.

Royals to one side for a moment, I was jolly glad I did - as the Gateau was absolutely To.Die.For.

I had said in my meal planning post for that week, that I was musing upon making a fruit sponge of some sort, so the thought was in my head even then.  However, it grew from a simple summer fruit sponge as time went along.  It's probably just as well the Jubilee happened when it did, before I'd had a chance to consider coating the lot in chocolate or something equally damaging to our waistlines.  I think it probably did enough damage as it was!

After adding the syrup - just look at the lovely texture!

The sponge was a simple "bung it all in together, whisk it up, put it in sandwich tins, bake it" sponge cake.  However, it was when hubby mentioned a gateau and I hit upon the idea of cutting each cake into two layers, that the rot set in.

I had a punnet of strawberries and a punnet of raspberries that we'd picked up as having been marked down in price, so I had the fruit there - and I'd bought a carton of double cream just because I anticipated requiring it for the fruit.

Raspberry layer in place

Now fruit and cream would be good - very good - in between each layer, but I wanted to make this gateau more gateau-like - sumptuous, delicious and naughty.  Hubby reminded me that we had a bottle of Amaretto liqueur in the cupboard and so the idea of the Amaretto syrup was born.  It was a simple matter to melt some sugar in water and add 50ml or so of Amaretto to it - then let it cool as the cakes cooled.  Once everything was cool, I brushed the syrup onto each layer of cake and let it soak in.

After that, it was just slather on the cream, add the sliced fruits and layer it up.  Do a simple little decoration on top, add a little icing sugar and ta daaa!  The Jubilee Gateau was born.

Hand me a fork and make it snappy!

Even though I knew the gateau was four layers tall, when hubby brought the slices through for dessert it still surprised me how enormous the whole thing was.  In truth, however, it was no more than a Victoria Sponge cake with extra cream and fruit instead of jam (and a hit of Amaretto, of course).  So simple to produce - but so very effective and so very, very tasty.

STRAWBERRY & RASPBERRY AMARETTO GATEAU   (makes 6-10 slices)

Ingredients :

200g caster sugar
200g softened butter
4 beaten eggs
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
2-3 drops vanilla essence
85g caster sugar (for the syrup)
2 tbsp cold water
50ml Amaretto liqueur
300ml double cream
2 tbsp icing sugar
strawberries & raspberries to fill.

Method :

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 190degC/375degF/Gas5.  Prepare two sandwich tins by lining with a circle of baking parchment.  I included the sides of my tins in the lining, but only because they're particularly old tins - nice shiny new ones won't need this.

2.  In a large bowl (I used our Kenwood Chef) place the 200g of caster sugar, the softened butter, the eggs, the flour, baking powder and vanilla essence.  Starting slowly (so as to keep the flour in the bowl), begin to whisk the ingredients together - or beat them together, if you're particularly sprightly and are doing it by hand.  Continue to mix until you have a soft, smooth texture whereupon you can divide the mixture equally between the two tins and smooth off the top surface.

3.  Put the two tins together on the one shelf if possible, and bake for some 20 minutes or until risen, golden and the cake springs back when lightly depressed in the centre.

4.  Remove the cakes from the tins and place onto a cooling rack until perfectly cool.

5.  In the meantime, you can get on and make the Amaretto syrup.  So take a small saucepan and place the 85g of caster sugar, the water and liqueur into it.  Mix them together and heat gently until the sugar has all dissolved.  Leave to cool.

6.  To assemble the gateau, take each cake and very carefully with a sharp bread knife cut through to create two layers from each cake.  Lay each layer out separately.

7.  Taking the syrup, brush onto each cake layer, distributing the syrup equally amongst the layers until it has all gone.

8.  Whip the cream with the icing sugar until it reaches soft peaks - be careful not to take it beyond this stage.

9.  Here on in, it is a simple matter of coating each layer with cream and adding sliced strawberries and the raspberries - remembering to save a few for decoration.  I would recommend that you place the first layer onto the presentation cake plate and build the cake from there, adding cream and fruit, then a layer of cake, then cream and fruit until you reach the last layer.

10.  Simply arrange the saved fruit attractively, sprinkle over a little icing sugar snow - and serve.

Printable version

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Moscato Love - a Valentine's Day cocktail (or any time, actually!)

Wow.  What a gorgeously delicious, refreshing, mouthwatering, eminently drinkable combination this is!

Now I'm not normally one for making cocktails.  However, when Barefoot Wine got in touch and asked whether (as I cook with wine quite often), I'd be interested in having some of their white Moscato dessert wine and Merlot red wine to play with, (see recipe for Drunken Spaghetti, next up on the blog) I just couldn't refuse.  Well, especially with Valentine's day hoving into view.

With the wine, came some suggested recipes - one of which was for the Moscato Love.  Now I dare say you could call this cocktail whatever the heck you like - as I can see that it has uses across all the seasons.  It is obviously appropriate for Valentine's day, however if you bear in mind the Cranberry juice and the red colour, it would make a fantastic alternative to Buck's Fizz at Christmas.  The flavours though - now they are all summer.  I can imagine that it would be utterly divine, paired up with raspberries from the garden, poured over ice and enjoyed whilst sitting on the patio watching the garden grow.  Fabulous!

As I say, I'm not one for cocktails - and in fact, I'm not one for alcohol in general (unless I'm cooking with it!).  However, this one just blew my little socks off.  I know that there are those out there who would be laughing into their martini glass at this being referred to as a "cocktail", but to be honest I really don't care.  Here's a thought - if you're catering for folk like me, who don't imbibe on a regular basis and who aren't wine drinkers, then this is a great choice - and I wouldn't mind betting that the drinkers will be just as happy with it!

My thanks go out to Barefoot Wine for giving us the opportunity of sampling the Moscato.  Outside of the cocktail, it is of course a very sweet wine (it's a dessert wine, when all is said and done) but in contrast to many it has a remarkably pure and clean flavour without any of the heaviness that so often comes with a dessert wine.

Cheers!

MOSCATO LOVE

Ingredients :

1 bottle of Barefoot White Moscato
250ml of lemonade
1 cup of raspberries
2 teaspoons of honey
2 cups of cranberry juice
Ice.

Method :

1.  Combine all the ingredients except the lemonade and the ice.  Blend until smooth.

2.  Gently add the lemonade, so as to minimise the loss of fizz.

3.  Pour over ice, or add ice to the jug.

4.  Be ready to get up and make some more!

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Happy birthday breakfast!

You know it's your birthday, when this shows up for breakfast.  :)

Gorgeous, just doesn't describe it.  Oh, and yes, it DID wake me up!  lol