Victoria Sponge Sandwich

24 March 2013 22:58

This is the most popular cake which is sold in the National Trust tearooms, which was a bit of a surprise to me but then I thought about it and it’s probably because it is a classic from childhood and let’s face it people in the National Trust tend to be the older generation who might think that Lemon Drizzle cake is something outrageously new and different so not worth the risk. They sell an amazing 171,000 slices per year.

Victoria Sandwich 2

I must get myself a sugar dredger or whatever you call them, because I just shook the sugar off a spoon and it didn’t work very well. I halved the quantity of the ingredients in the recipe, which meant that I used just three eggs when seven were used in the original. I think that half egg should have been substituted with a sploosh of milk or even some apple juice works well in a sponge if you think the mixture is a bit stiff. It is a wee bit dry for my taste and I’m sure that was why.

However, it is tasty and it’s also a very big cake, even just half the size it should be. The sandwich tins I used are 8 inches in diameter internally. I also added a few drops of vanilla extract to the cake mixture because I hate that eggy flavour you sometimes get in homemade sponges and the vanilla stops that happening. I used strawberry jam to sandwich the layers together.

avic sponge 3

Victoria Sandwich

Ingredients

350g/12oz self-raising flour

350g/12oz butter

350g/12oz caster sugar

350g/12oz (7) eggs

a few drops of vanilla extract (optional)

250g/9oz raspberry jam

Caster sugar to dust

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170oC (gas mark 3).

2. Grease and line two 9-inch sandwich tins.

3. Place the butter and sugar in a large bowl and use a whisk to beat until light and fluffy.

4. Add half the eggs and whisk to combine, add remaining eggs and whisk well until light.

5. Sprinkle over the flour and with a spatula fold into the eggs, using a figure-of-eight motion. Be gentle, you need to keep as much air as you can in the batter.

6. Divide between the tins and bake for 35-40 minutes. Test using a skewer inserted into the middle of the cakes; if it comes out clean, they’re ready.

7. Once cool, use the jam to sandwich both halves together. Finish with a dusting of caster sugar.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking

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Coffee and walnut cake

16 March 2013 23:57

whole cake side

Coffee and walnut cake

Serves: 8
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

Sponge:

250g (8oz) self raising flour

250g (8oz) margarine.

250g (8oz) sugar

4 eggs

1 tablespoon instant coffee mixed in a little hot water

1 tablespoon crushed walnuts (I added quite a lot more than this, just because I had walnuts which needed to be used up)

Icing:

125g (4oz) butter

250g (8oz) icing sugar

1 teaspoon instant coffee mixed in a little hot water

Method

Sponge

Preheat the oven to 200C or gas mark 6

1. Cream together margarine and sugar in a mixing bowl.

2. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture.

3. Add the crushed walnuts.

4. Add the coffee mixed with water and stir well.

5. Fold in the flour gently.

Put equal amounts into 2 x 8″ greased round sandwich tins, bake for 20 mins at 200C/360F/gas 6

Filling

Cream together butter and icing sugar in a bowl
Add mixed coffee

Sandwich cakes together with filling leaving a little to spread on top, then sprinkle with whole walnuts. You might be able to see from my photo that I grated some white chocolate over the cake, in an attempt to get Jack to eat it, but of course it just made it even sweeter.

This is a good cake, although it is quite dense, but not heavy – if that makes sense. I was not keen on the buttercream aspect of it though, it was too sweet.

The next time I bake this one I’m going to bake it in a loaf tin and make up a coffee syrup, skewer it all over and drizzle the syrup into it. I’m also going to use pecans instead of walnuts as Jack doesn’t like walnuts. I can’t taste much difference between them, but there you go, our taste buds are all different I suppose.

This is one of the cakes which is served in National Trust tearooms. It’s the third most popular one, they sell 102,000 slices of it per year! I think I’m going to bake their biggest seller next week – can you believe that it’s Victoria sponge? They sell 171,000 slices of that in a year.

a slice of cake

This post is linked with Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking.

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Lemon Drizzle Cake

2 March 2013 22:48

Lemon drizzle cake

When we found ourselves in a National Trust property in York in October we ended up having afternoon coffee there and that means cake too. I plumped for the lemon drizzle cake as I just love the flavour of lemons. Jack didn’t have any, he was being good!

The cake was lovely and I offered to share it with Jack – but he refused as he was still being good. When I cleared up the last crumb of cake and said how tasty it had been, he said – well I’ll never know as you didn’t leave any for me. Did he think I would feel guilty? I didn’t! Tough – I said.

Anyway, when the National Trust’s Spring magazine came through the letter-box I was really pleased to see it has an article about the cakes which are a staple feature of all their coffee/tearooms, including the recipes. The five cakes are, in order of popularity, Victoria sandwich, chocolate sponge, coffee and walnut cake, carrot cake and last but definitely not so in my opinion is the lemon drizzle cake. So that is what I baked one afternoon last week, I wish I could have shared it with you – really, because I’ve put on weight. That’s what happens when you aren’t feeding hungry young men any more, and you have that empty nest.

sliced lemon drizzle cake

The recipe below makes two cakes, so I halved the quantities as I only wanted one. The cake is best sliced quite thickly I think. It’s quite a big cake, in the first photo the cake is on a large serving dish, the sliced cake is on a dinner plate.

Lemon drizzle cakes.

300g/10½ oz self-raising flour
300g/10½ oz butter
300g/10½ oz caster sugar
50g/1¾ oz cornflour
6 eggs
3 large lemons

For the drizzle
300g/ 10½ oz caster sugar
150 ml/¼ pint lemon juice

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180 C/360 F (gas mark 4) line two 1 lb loaf tins with baking parchment. (I used greaseproof paper and it was fine.)

2. Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and mix with the electric whisk until fluffy and light in colour.

3. Add the eggs in two batches, whisking well between each batch.

4. Add 100 ml/3½ fluid ounces of lemon juice and the cornflour and whisk again.

5. Add the flour and fold in with a wooden spoon or spatula.

6. Divide between the tins and bake for about 40 minutes, testing with a skewer to see if cooked, it will come out clean if it is ready.

To make the drizzle

1. Place the lemon juice and sugar in a large bowl or jug and stir until the sugar has dissolved.

2. Allow the cakes to cool for a couple of minutes and then prick them all over with a skewer. Pour the drizzle over the cakes.

3. Allow to cool completely. Eat. Do more exercise!

As usual I’m going to tweak the recipe a bit. I didn’t add as much sugar to the lemon juice for the drizzle as I thought it would be too sweet, but it was still too sweet for me. So next time I’ll use less than half of what the recipe calls for and I’m going to try using icing sugar instead of the caster sugar, so that it should dissolve better. I wondered if I should have heated the lemon and sugar to make sure it dissolved properly and I had a look at different recipes, some heat and some don’t, but I think that you aren’t meant to in this recipe. BTW if you don’t know what caster sugar is – it’s just a finer version of normal white granulated sugar.

You can vary the recipe by substituting oranges for the lemons.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking.

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Chocolate beetroot cakes

10 September 2012 23:49

chocolate beetroot cakes

I’ve been searching for the perfect chocolate cake recipe forever, so it seems anyway, and I may just have found it at last. Beetroot seems to be the ingredient of the moment and I think I first heard of it being used in chocolate cake in a recipe in The Great British Bake Off last year. I didn’t fancy the idea much but I felt the same about carrot cake when it first became popular in Britain.

Then Nigel Slater did a beetroot cake which looked good but unfortunately it includes dried fruit and of course Jack hates sultanas, raisins, anything like that – he calls them ‘blisters’. I toyed with the idea of substituting chopped dates as he doesn’t mind those, but then I found this recipe on the BBC Food website and these cakes are just about perfect. They feel quite heavy but they aren’t heavy in the stomach, the weight is all due to the lovely moist texture of the sponge.

I didn’t have corn oil so I used sunflower oil. Cooked beetroot can be bought in vacuum packs at the veggie section of all supermarkets.

Ingredients

75g/2½oz cocoa powder or powdered drinking chocolate

180g/6½oz plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

250g/8½oz caster sugar

250g/8½oz cooked beetroot

3 large eggs

200ml/7fl oz corn oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

icing sugar for dusting

Preparation method

Preheat the oven to 180C/355F/Gas 4. Arrange paper muffin cases in a 12-mould muffin tin.

Sift the cocoa powder, flour and baking powder into a bowl. Mix in the sugar, and set aside.

Purée the beetroot in a food processor. Add the eggs, one at a time, then add the vanilla and oil and blend until smooth.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, add the beetroot mixture and lightly mix. Pour into the muffin cases.

Bake for 30 minutes or until the top is firm when pressed with a finger.

Cool on a wire rack and dust with icing sugar to serve.

I used a non stick muffin tin for mine but if you only have fairy cake cases that will be fine, it just means you’ll get more of them as they’re smaller. In the future I think I’ll split the muffins and fill them with cherry jam and cream, and maybe even have a cherry on top!

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The Great British Bake Off

9 September 2011 13:19

I was having a look at You Tube – as you do – I was hoping that there was a clip from STVs The Hour programme of the Scottish author Gordon Ferris, but no such luck. It was Judith (Reader in the Wilderness) who alerted me to his existence, he’s a crime writer and his books are set in Glasgow. I’m going to try them out in the hope that he manages to capture the great character of my birthplace. I read just one book by Denise Mina and I was disappointed with it because she failed completely on the Glasgow front, but maybe that’s only noticeable if you know the city.

Anyway, back to You Tube, I noticed that there are some videos of The Great British Bake Off on it. I never watch any of these reality/competition things, Big Brother and ‘Strictly’ type things just don’t appeal to me. But I must admit that I started watching the Bake Off, well the first one was on in the background when I was on my Netbook and I kind of got dragged in.

At first I was amazed that some of the contestants had been daft enough to bring in shop bought things to add to their celebration cakes. It’s the sort of thing we all do for kids cakes but surely not in a competition! Then I was less than impressed that they all seemed to make their pastry in machines and some of them had never made pastry before. Machine made pastry was not a success. My boys got cookery lessons at school, including hand-made pastry and there was still time for all the academic stuff.

Mind you when they got to the bread making bit I was full of admiration because the couple of times that I’ve tried to bake bread have been disastrous. I couldn’t even have put the results out for the birds because the RSPB would have done me for cruelty! My bread was so heavy the only possible uses for it would have been as doorstops or even anchors.

Anyway if you’re interested in baking, or just looking at food you might like to have a wee keek! They’re starting off with cup/fairy cakes. Kids stuff!

On the Gordon Ferris front – all of his books are out in my local library so he’s obviously popular, I might have to put in some requests.

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Some cream cakes

23 May 2011 00:06

Yesterday morning we went to St Andrews and as Karen K at Books and Chocolate wanted to know what a coffee tower looked like I just had to buy some cakes, for blogging purposes you understand!

Three cakes

So here they are, they got a wee bit bashed in the box on the way home, the coffee tower is the one on the left and it’s like a very big profiterole but it’s filled with coffee flavoured whipped cream and has coffee flavoured icing on top.

The middle cake is called a French cherry delight, again it’s made from choux pastry like a profiterole but there is cherry sauce at the bottom and then it is filled with whipped cream and of course topped with a cherry.

The cake on the right is a chocolate tower and it is filled with ordinary whipped cream and topped with chocolate flavoured icing. They are very similar to those cakes which in France are called a religieuse. I think it would be better if the cream was chocolate flavoured too.

Here they are halved so that you can see how full they are. They are on a large meat platter which gives you an idea of their size.

Three cakes cut

My husband and I had half of each of them, well what else could we do, cream goes off so quickly!

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Lamingtons

18 January 2011 23:05

Nutters – please be aware that this recipe contains nuts!

Back in the dim distant past when Kylie was in Neighbours and I saw it because it was on just before the evening news, the folks in the cafe always seemed to be scoffing Madge’s Lamingtons. I always wondered what on earth they were, never having heard of them before. Some sort of Australian delicacy I supposed. In fact, because of the strong Australian accents I thought it was something to do with lemons!

But I bought an old copy of Marguerite Patten’s Every Day Cook Book recently, I only had her All Colour Cookery book, my husband’s first present to me!! – and – jings, crivens and help ma Boab – there’s a recipe for Lamingtons in it, so I just had to try it out, they’re very tasty and here they are.

5 oz butter or marg.
7 oz sugar
3 eggs
10 oz self-raising flour
4 tablespoons milk

For the filling:
raspberry jam

To coat:
7 oz icing sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
3 tablespoons boiling water

To decorate:
6 oz dessicated coconut

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs gradually. Mix in the flour alternately with the milk. Spread the mixture into a greased 8-inch square cake tin and bake for 50 – 60 minutes at Gas mark 4/350-375 F.

Leave it to cool on a wire rack and then split it through the middle and spread the raspberry jam on the bottom layer. Sandwich the layers together, then cut the cake into 2 inch squares, you should be able to get 16 pieces.

Put the icing sugar and cocoa into a bowl and add the boiling water slowly. Mix to a smooth paste adding more water if it is too thick. To stop the icing from setting too quickly place the bowl over a pan of hot water.

One by one dip the squares into the icing letting any excess drip off before tossing them in the dessicated coconut. Allow to set before scoffing.

The recipe says you should put the squares on a fork or a skewer before dipping in the icing but I couldn’t get them to stay on so I ended up getting my fingers very messy! Finger sucking good though. (Be careful how you say that!)

For a richer flavour you might like to add a few drops of vanilla extract to the sponge mixture.

BTW it’s a very good cookery book.

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Chocolate Sponge Cake

23 March 2010 11:23

It was number 1 son’s birthday recently and although he isn’t mad keen on cake, I felt the need to bake one for him. We ate it with home-made vanilla ice-cream and he did enjoy it after all. It’s a very simple recipe.

175g/6oz margarine
175g/6oz sugar
2 eggs
200g/7oz self-raising flour
25g/1oz cocoa powder
6 tablespoons milk

Grease 2 x 18cm/7 inch cake tins.
Cream the margarine and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Mix in the eggs one at a time. Mix the cocoa powder into the flour and add it to the cake mixture, folding it in with the milk to form a dropping consistency.

Divide the cake mixture equally between the two tins and bake in a preheated oven, 180 C (350 F), Gas Mark 4, for 20-25 minutes until risen and firm. Leave in the cake tins for 5 minutes, then remove from tins and cool on a wire rack.

Sandwich the two cakes together with chocolate buttercream or whipped cream as desired.

To make buttercream:

2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons of boiling water
125g/4oz butter or marg.
250g/8oz icing sugar sifted

Blend the cocoa powder with the boiling water, then cream the butter/marg with the icing sugar until light and fluffy. Then beat in the cocoa mixture.

This should be enough mixture to sandwich the cakes together and cover the top. Decorate to your taste. I used broken chocolate pieces. Enjoy.

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Chocolate Spice Cake

6 November 2009 22:39

cake

Chocolate Spice Cake


I baked this cake for G’s birthday last week and it went down well. I first did this one 30 odd years ago but for some reason I hadn’t done it again. I think it does look kind of 70s – ish but it tastes good and is dead easy.

8oz self-raising flour
2 tablespoons cocoa
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1 level tsp cinnamon
6 oz butter or marg.
5oz sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup
3 eggs
4 tablespoons milk

Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, add the syrup then the eggs one at a time. Mix well then add the flour, cocoa and spices. Mix together until it is all well combined and if the mixture seems too stiff add up to 4 tbsp. milk.
Divide the mixture equally between two 8 inch sandwich tins which have been well greased and bake at 350 F, 180 C , gas mark 4 for about 30 minutes.
When cold, sandwich them together and cover with buttercream
icing. Decorate to your taste. I used glace cherries and almonds.

Chocolate Buttercream Icing
10oz icing sugar, sieved
5oz butter
2 dessertspoons cocoa powder
1 dessertspoon milk

Cream together the icing sugar, cocoa powder and butter until
well mixed and smooth, then beat in the milk.

Eat. Yum.

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