Up the Empire

My friend S, who was living with us for a while last year, is back in the UK at the moment. She is looking for a job and is filling up her spare time cooking. What better way to distract yourself? Last week she sent me a recipe for a very straight-forward Victoria Sponge cake. Since it was my friend H’s birthday at the weekend I decided I could kill two birds with one stone (or one friend with one cake, depending on how it turned out).

Now, I have to admit S’s recipe was a little short on details. I have a suspicion a few glasses of wine may have been consumed before she typed this little gem –
" Victoria sponge with secret ingredient

4 eggs - weigh them and use equal quantities of the following:
Self raising flour
Marg or butter
Caster Sugar

a splash of vanilla extract
a dash of milk
a teaspoon baking powder (not altogether read on to avoid concave flying saucer disaster)

	1. Use a hand mixer to cream butter and sugar together.
2. Add vanilla extract to beaten eggs.
	3. Add baking powder to flour.
4. Mix eggs and flour into creamed butter and sugar gradually, then add secret ingredient, splash of milk, keep whizzing.
	5. Bung into two round non-stick cake tins. Place on top shelf of pre-heated oven at 170C (gas mark 5) for around 30mins. Do not open door whilst cooking.
6. Let cool and dollop butter icing and raspberry jam in middle. Sprinkle with icing sugar. Yummo, who needs Delia, up the empire!"

Funny that she should mention Delia because that was the site I ended up checking to make sure the technique was not missing any steps. Maybe the step where you sift the flour. Or how about the one where you grease the baking tin. Then there was the old “Leave the cake for five minutes before removing it from the tin to cool”. Ahh yes, all vital steps. There seemed to be a general consensus in all the recipes that you should not open the oven door during the first half hour of cooking. So of course that’s all I really wanted to do. Love breaking rules, I do but I restrained myself this time.

I dropped the cake off at H's house while she was away for the weekend celebrating. I was tempted to try a piece but I have given a cake to H in the past that had a slice removed (for photo purposes only) so I thought I better give her this one in tact since it was for her birthday.