Name: Victoria Sponge Cake
Ingredients: icing (confectioners’) sugar; lightly salted butter; eggs; baking powder; caster (superfine) sugar; fresh berries; raspberry jam; natural vanilla extract; unsalted butter; plain (all-purpose) flour

Trish Deseine

Victoria Sponge Cake

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy
Serves
6–8

Appears in

100 Desserts to Die For

By Trish Deseine

Published 2020

About

10 Mins Preparation Time

35 Mins Cooking Time

The Victoria sponge is the most typical cake of the famous English afternoon tea, to be enjoyed after a game of cricket or croquet on a verdant lawn. Be careful not to confuse it with a genoise! The cake should be quite buttery, but its texture shouldn’t be too dense. When it comes to the filling, you can use whipped cream (perfect in summer with a few pieces of strawberry or some raspberries) or a buttercream filling. As for the raspberry jam, it is non-negotiable. As always, I prefer a lightly salted butter. In this recipe, you can save it for the buttercream filling and use unsalted butter for the cake.

Ingredients

For the cake:

175 g (6 oz) plain (all-purpose) flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 medium eggs (or 3 extra large)
175 g (6 oz) caster (superfine) sugar
175 g (6 oz) unsalted butter, softened
Fresh berries, to decorate (optional)

For the filling:

150 g (5½ oz) lightly salted butter
350 g (12 oz) icing (confectioners’) sugar
½ teaspoon natural vanilla extract
4 tablespoons raspberry jam

Method

MAKE THE CAKE. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4). Sift the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl, holding the sifter as high as possible to get plenty of air into your mixture. Add all of the other cake ingredients and beat for about 1 minute, until you have a smooth and uniform batter. The mixture needs to fall easily from a wooden spoon. If it seems a little too heavy, add 1 tablespoon of milk and beat for a few more seconds.

BUTTER AND FLOUR TWO ROUND CAKE TINS, 20 CM (8 INCHES) ACROSS AND 4 CM (1½ INCHES) HIGH. Divide the batter between them. Smooth them on top and bake for 30–35 minutes, without opening the oven door. To test whether they are cooked, touch the top of the cakes with your fingers; if they spring back to the touch, they are ready.

TAKE THE CAKES OUT OF THE OVEN AND LET THEM REST FOR ABOUT 1 MINUTE BEFORE UNMOULDING THEM (RUN A KNIFE BETWEEN THE CAKE AND THE SIDE OF THE TINS TO MAKE IT EASIER). Let them cool completely.

MAKE THE FILLING. Beat the butter with the icing sugar and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Spread this cream on one of the cakes. Spread raspberry jam on the other one. Place the cake with jam on top of the one with the vanilla buttercream. Serve with extra icing sugar and fresh berries on top if you like.