Classic Strawberry Victoria Sponge

I didn't plan to bake a lot this weekend, I had a small order of cakes for my friends mum but I definitely wasn't baking any cakes for myself, as this weekend it was my Birthday! and surely that's an occasion when other people should give me cakes and treats! I did end up making a couple of treats though but nothing too taxing, just covering some pretzels in chocolate, and making a version of a rice crispie cake but using ammareti biscuits and marshmellow instead (which was odd but tasty).

Anyway the other weekend I went to visit my friend at her brand new house as she recently hopped on the property ladder, so taking along a house warming cake seemed like the right thing to do, and as the fridge was packed full of Strawberries and double cream I decided to go for a classic Victoria sponge, something that strangely I had never made before, which is odd because as a cake I love it, so simple yet fresh, light and tasty. I then dressed it up a little using sponge fingers, ribbon and piles of strawberries just to make it look more like a gift. and here it is:

 And here's the cake before I dressed it all up:

I actually prefer it this way, just dusted with a little icing sugar as I'm not to keen on sponge fingers, but they do make it look pretty.

This cake takes me a little longer to make as I only have 1 round cake tin so I have to make it in two batches, I should really buy more tins. 

Anyway the recipe I used was from the BBC good food cake app for the IPhone and it was simple but tasted perfect, with a really light consistency so definitely a recipe I will use again. all I did was substitute jam for fresh strawberries and I used icing sugar in the filling rather than caster sugar.

here it is:

Classic Victoria Sponge


200g Unsalted butter, softened
200g Self raising flour
1tsp Baking powder
200g Golden caster sugar
4 eggs
2 tbsp milk


For the filling:
150ml Double cream
50g Icing sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
punnet of fresh strawberries
Icing sugar for dusting

Heat the oven to 180degC and grease and line 2 x 20cm round sandwich tins.
Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl, then tip in all the other sponge ingredients. Using an electric whisk, beat everything together until smooth.
Divide the mix between the cake tins then bake for 20 - 25 minutes until cooked and golden and a skewer inserted comes out clean. When cool enough to handle, remove the cakes from the tins and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.


To make the filling whip the cream with the sugar and vanilla using an electric whisk until the cream holds its shape. Spread one half of the cakes with the cream (saving some for the top of the cake if required) and then layer slices of strawberry on top like so:

Then gently sandwich the cakes together. If using jam instead of strawberries simply spread one half of the cake with cream and the other with jam and sandwich together.


I then decorated my cake by spreading a tiny bit of cream on each sponge finger and positioning them around the cake and tying a ribbon around to hold them in place, I then spread the rest of the cream on top of the cake and topped with chopped strawberries and dusted with icing sugar.

As I said before, I personally prefer the cake simple without the sponge fingers but either way this cake is tasty and fresh and went down very well with my friend and her parents and we got to enjoy it after the boyfriend got roped in to assembling her new pretty black glass dining table. (Well we needed somewhere to put the cake!)

Finally I wanted to show you the cute little cake mould I bought, It was a bargain at 69p and was really only bought of the novelty. Its a cake in the shape of a cupcake, not one of those huge cupcake pans you get (but I do want one of them) But a small mini cake that make the perfect size cake for 2 to share (or 1 to scoff by themselves)  any way its a small silicone mound and seems to produce a cute little cake. Boyfriend actually tried it out the first time and made this vanilla sponge.

Isn't it cute? And it would look even cuter iced in pretty colours. It cracked a little coming out the mould but I think that was more down to impatience to plate and eat the cake.

Any way that's all for today I'm off to look through my new cake book birthday presents and drool over the pictures.

Bye for now

xxx

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