Recipe of Victoria Sponge Cake

This year was the first ever series I’d watched of the Great British Bake Off; by the second episode, I was hooked and always looked forward to the next one the following week. I loved baking before watching the program but realized that I had kept repeating the same recipes that I knew were a success; Banana & Walnut loaf and Cranberry & Apricot flapjack (hence the random blog name, one of the most difficult things I found about starting a blog was thinking of a name for it!)

Once the bake-off had ended, I felt I should be a bit more adventurous and attempt to bake a cake that would also need to be decorated. I enjoy baking but don’t always have a reason to rustle up an 8″ cake.

Luckily my Brother’s Birthday was approaching, so I thought it would be a perfect time; if it failed, I could easily nip to Sainsbury’s before the big day!

I took to Google to find a recipe. I hate recipes that use cups as measurements; what size cup am I supposed to use!? I know the proportions will be the same, but I worry that the ratio of eggs will be wrong. To avoid this, I settled for a simple Classic Victoria Sandwich recipe rated well on BBC Good food.

I haven’t had much luck in achieving buttercream consistency in the past, so I adapted the recipe a little and instead relied on my good friend, Betty Crocker.

Contents

Ingredients:

For the Sponge:

200g caster sugar
200g softened butter
4 eggs, beaten
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp milk

For the Filling:

170g Hartleys No bits Raspberry Jam
250g Betty Crocker Vanilla Icing

(All of the above amounts can be altered for personal preference)

For Decorating:

400g Betty Crocker Vanilla Icing
200g Milkybar White Chocolate
2-3 packs of Cadbury Dream Fingers

(All of the above amounts can be altered for personal preference).

You can easily find these ones Amazon.

Method

Heat oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5.
Butter two 20cm sandwich tins and line them with non-stick baking paper.
In a large bowl, cream softened butter and caster sugar before mixing in the eggs. Gradually include the self-raising flour, baking powder and milk and mix until you have a smooth, soft batter.
Divide the mixture between the tins before smoothing the surface with a spatula or the back of a spoon.
Bake for about 20 mins until golden and the cake springs back when pressed. (This may take longer depending on the width of your cake tins).
Turn onto a cooling rack and leave to cool completely.
With both sponges side by side, spread the jam over the top of one of the sponges & spread the vanilla icing over the bottom of the other sponge before sandwiching them together.

victorian sponge cake recipe | victoria sponge recipe — *victoria sponge cake*

From this point on, I had to improvise…

I waited until the icing had set a bit before starting to spread the vanilla icing on the outside of the cake. Ideally, it would have been best to use a palette knife for this, but I used a butter knife instead as I didn’t have one.

While the icing was still sticky, I pressed the chocolate fingers around the outside; I was surprised at how many chocolate fingers it took to go around.

All that was left to do was to grate the Milkybar chocolate before sprinkling and gently press it onto the top of the cake.

It was advised to keep the cake in an airtight container and eat it within 2 days. We had no problem doing this as the cake was a great success and wasn’t around for long! Many people commented on how moist the sponge cake was;

I’ll hang on to this recipe, and perhaps next time, I’ll adapt the recipe a little further to make a chocolate sponge with milk chocolate decorations.

Do you have a favorite recipe you keep resorting back to? Do you have any suggestions for decorations for the milk chocolate version?

See Also:

5/5 - (4 votes)

Ingredients:

For the Sponge:

For the Filling:

For Decorating:

Method

Leave a Reply Cancel reply