Monday, July 05, 2010

The Day I Baked A Cake ....

As I write this I giggle and squeak because finally I can hand on my heart say that summer is officially here in all its glory...and you know what that means... It means sitting out in the garden with your best china tea cups and saucers and a big (I mean mahooosssivvee) wedge of cake.... I'm talking door stop proportions that you struggle to get your mouth round and end up in a fit of giggles and excitement with fresh cream and jam round your chin...... I just love tea parties...With tea pots and cake stands and pretty table clothes!

Lucky for you I have the BEST most easiest Victoria sponge recipe in the world and what’s more... It's pretty much foolproof unless of course you don't have an oven, but I'm pretty positive this recipe is so good you could bake it over hot coals! Ha I am joking! If anyone is stupid enough to try this then please send me a picture!
Anyway....
This recipe should serve 8 but I won’t tell if you fancy a slice the slice of 4 servings...it is that good!
Cooking and Prep:
This takes only 15 minutes to whisk up
But a lonnnnggg 20 Minutes to cook in the oven!

Ingredients You Will Need:

225g / 8oz Butter (Pref softened...Unless you fancy a work out)
225g / 8oz Caster Sugar
(Normal sugar works fine if you are caught short)
4 Large FREE RANGE eggs (Please have a heart for the chickens....Eggs from a poor old hen stuck in a cage makes me feel sad plus free range tastes worlds better!!)
225g / 8oz Self Raising Flour



For The Filling:
6 tbsp of lovely Strawberry Jam (Or Raspberry if you’re a bit of a rebel)
300 ml / 10 ½ fl oz of Lightly Whipped Double Cream (This is what is my old tea stained recipe says but I usually go by eye and put on a bit less)

Purely For Decoration:
A light dusting of Icing Sugar

(My very creative big sister was distraught as she watched my carelessly chuck icing sugar over the top of my cake...She says the only reason she would make the cake would be so that she could stencil a nice heart shaped Icing sugar of love to the sponge....So go for it...Hell even put pink icing
and hundreds of thousands on the top....this really is up to you but personally I HEART a classic Country Sponge!)

P.S You’ll need two 15cm – 17.5cm / 6”-7” Cake tins!

Anyway... Make sure kitchen is clean and hands are washed....Important! No one wants to find dirt and dead skin in there slice...YUCK! I also recommend (and this is a clever little tip) filling up the kitchen sink with some warm water and washing up liquid so you can let your utensils soak as you go along and you can dip your hands in when you want to rinse off all the mixture....or you can just lick it off! Whom I kidding (just wash your lick off after!)

Method:
Firstly you will need to find someone to enjoy it with so ring around some friends, make sure your some family are gonna be around in about an hour’s time, or even make a prompt spontaneous visit to your local old people's home and turn up on the door step with this boxed beauty, ring the bells and leave it on the step....Old people just LOVE cake! I think this part of the recipe is important as I have been caught short without anyone to share with before and of course I just had to eat it...I still haven't walked off all the guilt as of yet!

Preheat the Oven to 180c / 350F / Gas 4
Grease your tins! Do this by ripping up a corner of grease proof paper, smothering it in butter and smudging it all around the tin. A precious little tip my mum passed on is to take a pinch a bit of flour and sprinkle it in the tin and then gently pat it around the tin so it sticks to the butter (I’m not quite sure why we do this but this most definitely works when it comes to getting the sponge out at the end!)
In a big bowl add your butter and sugar and mash it together so it creams in a bit. You can use an electric whisk to do this (After spending a good 40 minutes looking for my whisk bit I found it in the bathroom, attached to my dads drill in which he ingeniously bodged together to make a miniture cement mixer... I marvel at his initiative but I think its best mum doesn’t find out!) or a wooden spoon (I also have no idea where the wooden spoon has gone. If you are using a wooden spoon then make sure you beat lots of air into the mixture as this will help it rise. The best method to use is ‘fold and cut’; all you have to do is fold the mixture in a circle at cut through it with a spoon down the middle. The mixture will become a lot lighter and fluffy!

Beat in all four eggs, one at a time and if the mixture looks as though it's curdling then add a tablespoon of flour after each egg if needed just to keep it happy!

Now the bit I love, time to add the flour. Add all the flour and give it a mix with a metal spoon but don't get carried away as you can over mix it and we don't want that. Just mix up until it looks smoothish and creamy.

Add the mixture to the greased tins one spoonful at a time! I say this as it’s very important to ensure equal measures in each tin else you will have one huge top and one small bottom. Try to get it spoon for spoon! Once all the mixtures is in the tins, give it a bit of a smooth over (Don't be meticulous....The heat will even it out in the oven...I didn't know this until I was caught by gran practically in tears because I couldn’t get it level) and then do a imaginary magic pat (in your head)as you would a sandcastle, just for good luck.

Nearly there now, Place both tins in the oven on the same shelf (if you can) roughly in the middle on gas mark 4 for roughly 20 minutes, this may take longer! You will know when the sponge is ready when you can press the cake gently and it springs back. The colour of the sponge should be pale and golden and another useful tip passed down to me is that cake has its own very useful way of telling you when it's cooked.....You can start to smell it wafting out of the oven! it’s TRUE! But in case your cake isn't much of a talker make sure you keep checking it.....Try not to open the oven too much though. Whoooa, its all such a balance, it's really not that hard though. Wait 20 minutess have a peek in the oven and go from there.

Now your cake is cooked and is looking magnificent if not a little naked it’s time to gently pat the cake out of the tin (Cut round the cake with a knife in the tin just to loosen it) and then pat and gently nudge it out! Let it rest on a cooling rack and while we wait for it to cool down we can make the filling...Yummmm!

Whisk the double cream up until light and fluffy (DO NOT OVER WHISK - ELSE YOU'LL HAVE A CHEESE CAKE! )let the cream sit in the fridge until cake has cooled down.

Make sure the sponge is not warm else the filling will slip and slide all over the place, the cake needs to be completely cool...Room temp! Now spread the jam on to one sandwhich and spoon the cream out to the other sandwhich and then gently sandwhich together....Yippee!

Dust / stencil / graffitti or whatever else you fancy doing to the cake with icing sugar......

And voila you have your own lovely country Victoria Sponge Cake.....Easy Peasy!

Hope you love it,

Love Loie x

2 comments:

  1. This is the funniest and most amazing recipe I have ever clapped eyes on!

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  2. I'm glad you Like it! Thanks for putting the first comment up on my blog...! Let me know how the cake turns out! x

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