Victoria Sponge Cake and Spiced Victoria Sponge Cake

No birthday party is complete without a cake. I gamely volunteered to make one and by volunteered, I mean insisted. It seemed only right and proper that I should choose one from the Sandwich Cakes chapter of Good Housekeeping’s Picture Cake Making (Waverley, 1955) but as I realised I hadn’t baked a sponge cake for atleast a year, something simple would be advisable.

As we had a range of guests attending. I decided to make a two sorts of cake based around the same recipe – a classic Victoria sponge and a spiced Victoria sponge.

Notes

• Good lord, the icing took a lot of heating before it thickened – I would estimate an hour, no joke. When it had thickened however, it was very easy to spread. I used mostly basic dark chocolate and a little bit of Green & Blacks Maya Gold. (Thanks for the birthday present of the sugar letters. You know who you are.)
• Small disaster – my spring-sided cake tin leaked slightly so the bottom layer was slightly thinner than I intended (and I had to remove a  crispy layer of cake from the bottom of my oven. Thank God my oven is self-cleaning, it just peeled away.)

Results

For reasons I can’t quite fathom, the spice cake was lighter than the vanilla layer, although both were complimented for their moistness. Following the recipe exactly meant not doing any of the tricks I would normally use to make the sponge as  light as possible  (such as swapping a dessert spoon of the sugar for golden syrup or a heaped teaspoon of  the wheat flour for corn flour). It wasn’t a bad effort though and certainly, a fair amount was eaten on the spot despite how well we had all laid into the other dishes. The icing had an amazing  texture and flavour – definitely worth the time.

Caked by Elly

Crunchy Date Bars

Dates: I don’t like fresh ones. I don’t like whole ones. I once, however, ate a pudding of tiny deep fried pastries filled with pulped dried dates and chocolate, accompanied by some sort of pale ice cream. This dessert lives with me, it haunts my dreams and one day, I will recreate it. Until then, I shall raid the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Cookery Compendium’s ‘Small Fancy Cakes’ section (Waverley 1955).

Date Crunchies

Ingredients

8oz flour
4oz rolled oats
3oz sugar
5oz margarine
12oz dates
Grated rind of lemon
2 – 3 tbps. Water

Put the flour, oats and sugar into a basin. Melt the margarine, add to the dry ingredients and mix well. Chop the dates, put with the grated lemon rind and the water into a pan and heat until the mixture is of a soft consistency. Spread half the dry mixture over the bottom of a Swiss roll tin, spread with the date mixture, and sprinkle the rest of the dry ingredients on top. Bake in a moderate oven (375 degrees F) for 1 hour. Turn out on a flat board, and when quite cold, cut into fingers or triangles.

• I halved the quantities

• I decided to use Demerara sugar

• The whole thing was obviously not going to stick together. The dry mixture was obviously very dry.  I followed the instructions to the letter and ‘sprinkled’ the topping on, rather than flattening it down into the date layer

• It came out of the oven flaky and pale. If I had tried to turn it out on to a board it would have fallen to bits. I cut a bit out and ate it – it was crumbly and a little bland. I rescued it by melting down some more sugar and butter and because I had gone off-recipe already, some cinnamon. Then I poured this over the top and baked it for another 20 minutes

Conclusion

I speculate that this recipe would work if the sugar and fat were melted together like a flapjack.  The oven was simply not hot enough to completely melt the sugar. My end result was a biscuit-y bottom layer, a chewy middle layer, (very similar to mince) and a crispy topping. Also, they store very well – over 2 weeks.

Dated by Elly

Chocolate-Cheese Fudge Cake

Back in April, you might remember Alix and I hijacked Chris and Vicky’s bbq with a vintage bake-off. I took along this lemon butter cake which turned out going down well. However, I didn’t feel confident whilst the cake was cooling so I made a second cake – three columns along from the other one so another from “Female Cookbook 1978″.

INGREDIENTS

125g (4oz) butter
125g (4oz) processed cream cheese
1 cup caster sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup chopped walnuts
85g (2.5oz) Van Houten cocoa
300g self raising flour
0.25 tsp bicarbonate of sofa
0.25 tsp salt
1 cup sour milk
whipped cream

Method
To make frosting – heat 1/2 cup cream with 60g (1oz) butter until the latter has melted. Remove from heat. Gradually add 3.5 cups sifted icing sugar and 0.25tsp salt. Add 85g (2.5oz) melted Windmolen cooking chocolate and 1tsp vanilla essence. Beat all together over ice until thickened to spreading consistency.

For the cake – Cream butter and cream cheese with brown and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in walnuts. Fold in sifted flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of sofa and salt alternately with sour milk. Fill into well-greased and lightly floured 20cm (8in) sandwich tins. Bake in a moderate oven for 45 mins. Turn out onto cake cooler and when cool, sandwich cake with sufficient stiffly whipped cream and cover with frosting.

The result

Notes

- no walnuts, I *think* I used hazelnuts instead.
- I loathe cream so didn’t bother with the frosting at all. I do hate recipes which don’t list all the ingredients at the start and run the risk of leaving you in the lurch when you get into the ‘guts’ of the recipe.
- Van Houten cocoa (and Windmolen chocolate for that matter) – this is like when American chocolate cake recipes harp on about “dutch processed cocoa”, whatever that is. Don’t worry yourselves, I always use ‘regular’ cocoa and it’s fine. I can’t think if I’ve ever even seen specific Dutch cocoa, even in Waitrose ponce section full of Charbonnel & Walker…
- did I mention I hated cream? I sandwiched these together with a basic cream cheese icing rather than cream.
- How to sour milk= tip a tablespoon of vinegar in it (I use rice vinegar – I think most people use cider vinegar. I’ve used rice vinegar mostly because I generally have some. I did invest in cider vinegar a while ago and I actually didn’t like it as much in it’s role as curdler).

Conclusion

This makes a large cake when both parts wedged together. I felt like the lemon cake I made earlier hadn’t risen enough and was too flat, and this chocolate cake went the other way! I still feel like I’m yet to find the happy medium – am sure this doesn’t happen when making Victoria sponges. Or perhaps it does? I really enjoyed the anarchy~ of mixing butter and cream cheese to start! I don’t think I’ve ever done this before and it made the cake kinda crumbly.I stuck with the cream cheese theme by making a cream cheese icing but perhaps this would have been better if I’d just gone the whole hog and made a chocolate filling? Or maybe orange – there’s an orange cream filling in the cake recipe immediately proceeding this one. Oh for goodness sakes, I must cook something other than cake sometime… let me just recover from the indie flu and I’ll see what I can do. Ehhh. Why didn’t this auto publish when it was supposed to~

Caraway Tea Bread

I was looking for a vehicle for jam, a change from the fruit-filled tea bread and a way to use up ingredients I already have.

This item is introduced as being suitable for children, although ‘Grown ups may do well to visit on its afternoon debut’ apparently.

From Tea-Time and some Cakes, Kitchen Essays, Agnes Jekyll. (Persephone Books, reprinted 2008)

Caraway Tea Bread

3 teacups flour
1 teacup castor sugar
1 cup boiling milk
3 oz butter
2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
1 large dessertspoonful ground caraway seeds

Mix flour, baking powder and sugar, rub in butter, mix the milk warmed with the egg beaten and the ground caraway seeds. Knead into a flattish brick-shaped loaf or cake, and bake 20 minutes in a quick oven.

To be eaten fresh with a little butter.

Notes

• The caraway seeds I have are whole and ended up being bashed and chopped a bit before they were added. I had a kitchen equipment fail by losing my pestle (Where is it, seriously?! My kitchen is tiny! Don’t comment ‘Behind the fridge!’, I have already looked there.)  and then immediately after this, my hand mixer stopped working.
• I also didn’t have any milk so decided to substitute a cup of hot water and a spoonful of oil, to which I added the seeds while I was doing the weighing and rubbing in so they could soften up.
• I rubbed the fat and dry ingredients into tiny even crumbs, which, I realise in retrospect may have been an error in terms of the softness of the loaf.
• I used a small loaf tin. I contemplated putting the mixture into 2 round cake tins but the batter  (which was like firmer, more elastic cake batter) filled the loaf tin by 2/3 which seemed about right.
• Cooking time given is a complete lie, if you’re cooking it in a bread tin. I gave it 20 minutes at GM8, after which time it was brown on top and still liquid within.  I then turned the oven down to GM5 and gave it another 20 minutes. I imagine if I had cooked it in a flatter tin, it would have been quicker.

Conclusion

The texture is a cross between a cake and a scone, with a crisp crust and firm enough centre on which to spread butter. I think I may have overcooked it slightly so I shall have to see how well it keeps. It is also rather crumbly, with some pieces of crust breaking off so next time I make this, I’ll use a shallower tin. It is fairly sweet but the flavour is good – I thought it might need some orange or lemon zest or some vanilla but the fruity notes in the caraway seeds have infused the whole loaf.

Carried away by Elly

Cherry Cobblestone Cake

For a barbeque at the weekend myself and Sarah had a vintage cake bake-off. The rules – bake an individual cake (ie no cupcakes) from a vintage recipe, release both cakes simultaneously on the BBQ attendees, and the first cake to be finished wins.  Sarah has already written hers up here, and I must congratulate her as the bake-off winner as her cake was polished off fastest. I feel compelled to point out that her cake was smaller than mine, and next time we might have to think a bit harder about the rules! (nb – am not bitter).

The cake I chose to make was a Cherry Cobblestone Cake, from my current favourite recipe resource, the Alison Burt Super Saving Recipe Cards (note to self – use other recipe books).

Cherry Cobblestone Cake

175g soft margarine

175g castor sugar

3 eggs

100g sultanas

75g glacé cherries, chopped

25g angelica, chopped

225g plain flour

1/2 level tspn baking powder

Topping:

50g glacé cherries

3 tablespoons apricot jam

Grease a 2lb/ 1kg loaf tin and line it with greaseproof paper. Place the margarine, sugar, eggs, sultanas, glacé cherries and angelica in a mixing bowl. Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl. Beat together with a wooden spoon for 3-4 minutes until well mixed. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin. Smooth the top. Place the halved glacé cherries in rows along the top. Bake in a moderate slow oven (325°F/ 170°C/ Mark 3) for 1.5-1.75 hours. Turn the cake out of the tin onto a wire rack to cool. Heat the apricot jam in a saucepan and when boiling sieve it. Brush the jam over the cake.

Notes

• I had a bit of a cooker mishap and heat was on 220°C for about half an hour before I rectified this. This meant the cake was a bit browner than intended and rather hard generally.
• It’s an incredibly simple method – chuck it all in the bowl and mix for a bit. I didn’t even use the food processor. Ideal for kid’s baking sessions.
• I couldn’t find any angelica, so I have cheated and  substituted mixed peel which worked fine, but didn’t look as good as some nice green chunks of angelica would have.
• I think my scales didn’t weigh the flour properly – I suspect I used a little too much, which contributed to the denseness of the finished ‘brick’.
• I was somewhat apprehensive about boiling the jam -  when I worked as a cake finisher* my weakness was putting huge vats of jam on to boil and forgetting them until reminded by the acrid smell of 5 litres of burnt jam.
• Although the recipe calls for 125g of glacé cherries overall I used up a 200g tub, and could have done with a few more to decorate the top.

The result

(photo courtesy of ledgr)

Conclusion

The cake was actually rather nice, despite the slight overcooking, which was much less noticible once the thing was cut. The sponge was a lovely pale orange, and the fruit: sponge ratio was good. The cooked cherries on the top, which I was kind of dubious about at first were really nice, and the apricot jam glaze gave it an added chewiness, in a good way. This is the first Alison Burt card I’ve done where I’ve been happy with the result, and I would cook this again, this time making sure the oven was on the right setting! Plus it’s an ideal shape, size and firmness to withstand transporting on public transport all the way across London.

*best. job. title. ever

Cobbled together by Alix

Lemon Butter Cake with Lemon Filling

Happy anniversary to Chris and Vicky! C&V hosted a super barbequeue on a wonderful sunny Saturday, and Alix and I decided that we’d shamelessly hijack it with a vintage “cake-off”. I brought the below, from the Female Cookbook 1978 FEATURING Ellice Handy Recipes. This is in fact a Singaporean cookbook sent to me by lovely Janet (@j4) which has a brilliant mix of 70s margarine based treats like “golden swans” cheek to cheek with pulot hitam, pickled blimbings, Lancashire Hotpot (hurrah) and curried beef schnitzel. Love it. What’s a blimbing? Where can I find one in London? Hilariously it calls for the blimbings to be dried in the sun for a week of good sunny days, before pickling. I don’t think this translates to a London cook Anyway. I chose to make lemon butter cake – less exotic but no less tasty by any means. I have a few more things to come from this book! The more Malay/Singaporean dishes may require more researches and trips to dusty Chinatown back rooms in lieu of the Serangoon Market….

LEMON BUTTER CAKE

185g butter
155g caster sugar
1tbsp grated lemon rind
3 egg yolks and 2 whites (beaten together)
250g self raising flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup milk
1 tbsp lemon juice

cream butter and sugar well, then add lemon rind and salt. Gradually add the beaten eggs, beating in well. Lightly fold in the flour. Alternate with the milk and lemon juice, ending with flour. Pour cake batter into 2 small sandwich cake tins which have been greased and lined on the bottom with greased paper. Bake in moderately hot oven for about half an hour or till cake is done. Allow to cool after removing cake onto cake cooling rack and sandwich together with Lemon Filling.

Lemon Filling

1.5 tsps grated lemon rind
2 tsps lemon juice
2 egg yolks well beaten
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsps cornflour
1 tbsp butter/marg
1/2 cup boiling water

In a small saucepan mix cornflour, sugar, lemon rind and lemon juice. Add boiling water, stirring onstantly. Put pan on low heat and stir til mixture thickens. Remove from heat, cool a little and then add very slowly the beaten egg yolks, stirring all the time. Put the saucepan back on low heat, cook til mixture thickens, stirring constantly. Cool slightly befre using as filling to sandwich together the two cakes.

RESULTS!

Item! everyone at the party said nom!
Item! I had a total fail in making this tbh so I’m amazed it turnd outwell. First of all. Self raising flour, I don’t DO. However… I forgot to add the raising agents until the very end so the cake, um… didn’t rise that much? Yet! The cake was still quite light despite aesthetically looking more like two huge drop scones. I added 3 tsps baking powder but should have used four AND put them in at the beginning, but that’s just absent mindedness.
Item! Unwaxed lemons are the ones you want for lemon cake (for anything involving lemons, really – but definitely so for stuff like this whch requires lots of lemon rind.
Item! When I was making the filling? I forgot to put in the SUGAR. Whacked it in at the end and it was fine. But srlsly. Forgetting the SUGAR?! WHere was my head.
Item! you’ll see the filling calls for butter. But then it never says where to put IN the butter. This book is crazy bizarre for doing this! No matter though, didn’t feel like it was lacking anything.
Item! this was baked with the aid of delicious masala tea, Justin Timberlake, Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop on a slightly unco-operative resonance.fm stream (never mind), Hikaru Yaotome and Kota Yabu’s white day skit, delicious organic lemons and IKEA hand-cream.

I RECOMMEND THIS LEMON CAKE. One of the lovely side effects of the filling not being very thick is that it oozes down the sides of the cake so there’s a lovely sticky lemony bonus glaze on the outsides which went down very well with some merry eaters. Give it a go, don’t balk at the amount of eggs it requires – eggs are good for you… ne?

Forgetfully baked by Sarah.

Pineapple and Cherry Loaf

Apparently 48 hours is as long as I can go without cake. I had some after lunch and now I want some more.

Pineapple and Cherry Loaf

Preparation Time: 35 min
Cooking Time: 1 ½ hours

Ingredients:
6 oz. glace cherries
1 ½ oz. glace pineapple
3 oz. ground almonds
Grated rind of half a lemon
6 oz. butter or margarine
6 oz. caster sugar
3 eggs
3 oz. self-raising flour
3 oz. Plain flour
Pinch salt

Grease a loaf tin, 4 ½ in. by 9 in. (top measurement): line with buttered greaseproof paper. Wash and dry the cherries, cut them in half and set 10 aside. Chop the pineapple and mix with the cherries, ground almonds and lemon rind.

Beat the butter until soft, then add the sugar, and cream until light and fluffy. Beat the eggs before adding them to the mixture a little at a time. Sift and fold the flours and salt, a third at a time into the creamed mixture. Lastly fold in the fruit.

Spoon into the prepared tin, level the surface and arrange the reserved cherries on top. Cover the tin loosely with kitchen foil, taking care that it does not touch the cake mixture. Bake in the centre of an oven pre-heated to 350F (mark 4) for about 1 ½ hours or until well-risen and firm to the touch. Cool on a wire rack and remove the lining paper. [Reader's Digest Cookery Year, 1976]

Notes

• As usual, I didn’t have quite enough of a vital ingredient to make the recipe to size. Today 4oz of cherries caused me to reduce all quantities by 1/3. I could have used the same quantities of everything else but I hate playing ‘Hunt the cherry’ in a cherry cake.
• I used a silicone loaf tin, not a lined tin one. See how pretty!
• Speaking of pretty (or not), I placed the cherries according to the illustration.
• As with the other recipes in this book, the prep time assumes that you are a terrible inexperienced cook.
• This cake creates far too much washing up – a container for the 10 cherry halves to decorate, another for the cherries, lemon rind and almonds, a bowl in which to beat the eggs and a large mixing bowl. It had better be worth it.
• I checked it after 1 hour, a skewer came out clean but it still looked a bit pale on top for my taste. I put it back and it had the full 90 minutes.

Conclusion

The cherries sank which surprised me as the batter was very firm. The flavour is a bit weak – I would add some more lemon zest and maybe some ginger if I made it again.  I would also use fresh pineapple – the glace is quite tasty but it’s a bit like having chunks of sweet in a cake. I also can’t see why the classic creaming method is inappropriate here. The crust of the cake is quite crisp at the corners and I will update this in a few days to see how the cake has ‘kept’.

Update: The flavour and texture of the cake have improved. It’s firm as you would expect from a loaf cake. Yum.
13/04/09

Baked by Elly

Chequerboard Cake

This recipes comes from a box of recipe cards I got from a charity shop in Camden for £3 called Alison Burt’s Super Saving Cookery Cards, published by Hamlyn in 1975. I was in two minds about buying them as I’d been at the car boot previously and had a lot to carry home already. But, heck, I’m glad I made the effort, as they’re kind of amazing. It’s a collection of around 200 cards, divided into categories like Budget Entertaining, Oriental Cookery, Scones and Teabreads, Ice Cream Desserts. The recipes are mainly quite sensible but some of them are wonderfully tacky in a vaguely Abigail’s Party way (Kipper Pizza, anyone?), and all of them are depicted on the front of the recipe card with a picture, occasionally featuring some odd set dressing (Dutch macaroons are displayed in tiny ceramic clogs and arranged around a windmill). I haven’t found much online about Alison Burt – Alibris have a few cookery titles by someone of the same name, looks like she did a few cookery titles. There’s enough intriguing recipes in this box to keep anyone going for a lifetime, but I decided to make something from the Special Cakes section:

Chequerboard Cake

100g margarine

100g castor sugar

2 eggs, beaten

100g self-raising flour

1 level tablespoon cocoa, sifted

1 tablespoon milk

3 tablespoons raspberry jam, sieved

Icing:

50g plain chocolate

75g margarine

150g icing sugar

angelica for decoration

Grease 2 7inch round shallow cake tins and line the bases with greased greaseproof paper. Cream the margarine and castor sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Sift in the flour and fold in with a tablespoon. Divide the mixture in half. Add cocoa and milk to one half. Put one mixture in each tin. Bake in a moderate oven (350F, 180C, Mark 4) for 20-25 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Cut a 5 inch round from the centre of each cake. Cut a 3 inch round from the centre of the small rounds. Transfer the 5 inch chocolate ring to the plain cake and the plain one to the chocolate cake. Reassemble both cakes, sticking them together with raspberry jam. Sandwich the cakes with more raspberry jam. Make the icing. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Cool. Beat the margarine and sifted icing sugar. Add the chocolate. Decorate as illustrated.

Results

Notes

• OK, so the amounts specified in no way yield the size of cake this is supposed to make. I got two sponge disks which were about half an inch thick. Working on the assumption that the cake shown in the picture is 7″ in diameter I estimate its depth at around 2.5-3″. Mine was around 1″ tall, and as you can see, hardly looks like the picture. Good thing I have no pretence of professionalism, or I’d have to contact Cake Wrecks and confess.
• I used water instead of milk.
• I used a martini glass, and a small wine glass to cut the circles from the cakes. This worked ok as the sponge was thin but I’m not sure how I would have done it neatly with a thicker cake to cut.
• I stupidly forgot to jam the pieces together. I’m a seasoned warmer of jam, and was quite looking forward to heating up some jam for gluing, but totally forgot this step. I’m not sure it would have worked that well anyway, as the sponge was very crumbly.
• I substituted cocoa for the plain chocolate in the icing as I had accidentally eaten the chocolate I bought for this purpose, only minutes before. Oops.
• I always get icing wrong, so I went a bit ‘off-recipe’ with the quantities here. I am not convinced by margarine in icing though.
• I tried to ‘decorate as illustrated’ but 1) I do not have a piping bag, and 2) it’s rather hard to do anything with a cake that’s just an inch high.
• I am not sure where the angelica was supposed to go. Whatever, I had none anyway.

Conclusion

This cake could be really excellent with a few tweaks – an easy way to make something that looks kind of impressive. HOWEVER this recipe is screwed – double the quantities (at least) for the sponge and then maybe you’ll be onto something. Some flavouring could be good too – chocolate cake is lovely, but this is a marg heavy cake and some mint or citrus tones could help even things out. It tasted very average, and I am not exactly excited about eating the rest.

Iced by Alix