The Great British Victoria sponge cake

I know, you're probably thinking why is there a post on such a simple cake like this. Like how can a simple, small tiered cake that's entirely naked, and basically 5 ingredients, be a close second favorite for me.

You're probably also wondering why there isn't some sort of three tiered cake, in different shapes and sizes, with crazy icing challenges, featured in this blog yet. Well lo and behold, this cake can actually come out tasting wrong or collapse (yes, collapse), and it's so painfully simple, that it shouldn't even go wrong. Trust me, it can. Cakes are difficult to perfectly master. Mastering refers to a whole slew of things with making a perfect cake, small or large. There's the whole debate around moistness, dryness, measuring, oven temperatures, timing, folding, beating or creaming enough, fresh versus old ingredients, let alone the icing and buttercream decorating bonanza part, which is a class in artistry by itself. I have explored tiered cakes, and I will be posting about one very soon, because it was my first tiered, properly iced and decorated cake. It's what helped ignite my desire to finally start this blog. Funny, it wasn't my first post, I think because it wasn't snapped along the process, and I only have the final result pictured. Oh well. Back to this cake and mastering it. The Great British Victoria sponge cake (I added the Great British), is really just known as Victoria sponge cake or Victoria sandwich cake, no less named after a British Queen, and has quite the historical background to it. I seem to have a spoilt and rich appetite for royal desserts, but it is simple too that my sister actually finds it rather boring.

The original versions made for Queen Victoria didn't include buttercream or cream fillings, only the jam. The cream spread is a modern day addition, and the best part. The exteriors of the cake itself is never iced, but lightly dusted with icing sugar on top (again, I ran out, and thought what the heck, it doesn't always have to be dusted, and I do like to show the imperfections of baking and finished products along the way, because sometimes it's never all there, but it really is). It's the icing sugar for crying out loud, not the butter amount, which would be disastrous. This recipe does have a modest start in its history. It was adapted from the classic pound cake recipe, which does not involve a leavening agent, hence its denseness. Baking powder was invented in 1843 by English food manufacturer Albert Bird. Prior to baking powder, leavening agents were best left to yeasts, for breads and the alike. Cakes, by example of the pound cake, are less light in texture, but moist because of the fats (butter, lard, oil, etc). Bakers would obtain yeast from brewers or distillers back in the day. For cakes, beaten egg whites were replicated as a leavening agent back in that same time, and which you can still see in ancient recipes. These were the ways around not using yeast in cakes or sweets. Baking is science, and it's all a chemical process, from leavening agents used today to what the original substitutes were decades, even centuries ago.

However, the birth and rise of baking powder was a transformation for bakers around the world. This all thanks to Albert Bird trying to figure out an alternative to using eggs or yeast apparently, because his wife had allergies, but who doesn't not want to eat cake. This adjustment to baking has changed everything we know about it, and the simplifications that come with ingredients today. We know how to source substitutes when needed, thanks to tips, friends and google, but we definitely have all the true and tried chemical inventions to help baking be a smoother process, even beginner friendly, in today's world. The baking powder, some first acting, others first double acting, which gets more and more technical with its timed release, but essentially it transforms a cake from being dense to light and soft, and risen. The batter in the Victoria sponge cake lacks the elastic structure to hold gas bubbles, and this is where baking powder comes in, which helps speed up the process of baking. You can bake this cake via two methods. As you can see, I bake with the first method, which is to split the batter in equal portions in two baking tins. There's a little tip and trick I have picked up along the way with cakes that are slightly domed (this won't work if it's overly domed, so you will still need to level your cake). If your middle rises a little more than the rest of the cake, which will happen no matter what (again, goes back to my conversations around oven temperatures, batter mix, etc), you can simply place a tea towel over the top of the cake when it has been removed from the oven, and gently press down with your palm, to help flatten it. Be careful of your fingers. Unless you're submitting this cake for an award or presentation, then the tea towel trick is suffice.

It really begins with the popularity of the humble pound cake in the eighteenth century, when it took the usual fruity, spicy, heavy dense cakes toward something lighter and golden brown, with less fuss, and no fillings. No chewy raisins, or spiced fruits, and the like. Eventually emphasizing sponge cakes, and the ever popular Victoria sponge cake. The batter should stick to tradition, in my opinion, by creaming the butter and sugar first, to a fluffy, creamy texture. Often times you will read "till it is light and fluffy", just like how you want your sponge cake light and fluffy. It should take minutes to achieve that, which I think is the first common mistake made in the kitchen. Creaming butter and sugar is seldom done long enough. We tend to rush, before we realize to take everything slow. As simple as a sponge cake can be, creaming butter and sugar should be done in minutes, not seconds, and if you're feeling sturdy enough to do it by hand, then you'd definitely need to make sure your muscles are feeling worked before you think it's ready. To be honest, a stand or electric mixer are what will get you the best result. You're not beating the ingredients, you need to have that batter slap the edges of your bowl, so all that air gets trapped. Believe it or not, I cream my butter and sugar for at least 4-5mins. It's an incorporation process. It is allowing the butter to combine with the sugar for even baking, because the water in the butter starts to dissolve into the sugar, whilst air is trapped as tiny bubbles in the fat. Essentially you are aerating your mixture, not just combining, unlike stirring and beating. By rushing this process, you're not properly allowing the butter to be creamed, and sometimes you may still see butter pieces when folding your batter. You don't want this. The creaming technique gives you a proper bang for your buck. For instance, let's take cookies, you think you're able to make 25 cookies, but really, creaming instead of mixing your butter and sugar just gave you at least 5 more cookies; the numbers will vary depending on your recipe, but you gain more out of it.

Another important step we tend to overlook is the room temperature rule. Room temperature, to me, is such an unknowing and misleading term. What exactly is room temperature to you, personally? We all have different measures of that. Butter doesn't start to melt till about 90F. Your perfect room temperature butter, technically speaking, is said to be around 60-65F. That does feel cooler than room temperature. However; if you took your butter sticks out of the fridge, cut them up into smaller pieces and laid them out on your counter, whilst prepping everything else for your recipe 10mins later or so, the butter should be pliable and ready enough to be creamed. Consider this a near perfect 60-65F achievement for butter. Everyone's kitchen room temperature will be different, but I tend to be in a 70-72F space. Warm or melted butter no longer retains air, which will lead to denser, or collapsed doughs and batter when baked. Your batter mix is the basis of a good cake, from mixing just enough, to following through correctly from the dry to wet ingredients, in order to lock in the right amount of moisture or leavening when it is cooked. Remember my collapsing comment earlier, well this may be a serious cause for those sunken middles when you remove your cakes from the oven. Ever noticed and wondered what happened, and why? There are so many reasons as to why your cake may have a sunken middle, from the batter mix, to your oven temperature, to old inactive baking powder (yes, it's like yeast, it does eventually expire), but warm butter, when not called for, is a recipe for disaster, to begin with.

And, remember, always sift your flours into cake mixtures too. You may even notice British recipes don't call for baking powder, but instead ask for self-raising flour, which already contains the baking powder and leavening agents in it, this is a very British thing, because I have yet to find self-raising flour anywhere else. Similar to creaming butter and sugar, you need the aeration process for flour, so that you get that bounce and fluffiness in your cakes all the way through. This cake is about lightness and air. Maybe that's why I do love it, not because of its easy, perfectly sweet flavors, but for it's lightness. You can bake any old cake, but if you want to bake a cake correctly, and attempt to achieve greatness throughout, then taking the time to do the steps correctly will give you greater reward, even with the simplest and quickest of cakes like this one. It hits the spot, without being offensive or heavy on your palette. There aren't any crazy flavors to it, either. It is humble. Victoria sponge cake is unforgiving in its simplicity. Simplicity is key, and necessary, and probably why my sister finds it so boring.