Victoria Sponge Cake With Raspberry Cream

This cake has that winning combination of being entirely decadent and delicious, but still light in flavor and texture. Is there anything better than sponge cake paired with whipped cream and fresh strawberries? I mean, really, this is dessert perfection! And as a bonus, it comes with one of the easiest recipes I’ve ever encountered. It requires only 5 ingredients and 45 minutes start to finish. How great is that?!

Somehow, when I made this cake, I managed to make a complete mess. And as a generally neat baker, mess doesn’t happen often for me. But today was different. First it was the sugar. It was everywhere, all over the counter, covering my phone. Not so good! Next was the cake batter. Maybe I was overly eager with the mixing, but that gooey stuff found its way out of the bowl and eventually ended up giving some serious decoration to my recipe page. Practically the only thing safe from its sticky wake was the ceiling! I don’t know what got into me, but that mess turned into a pretty good cake. Lesson learned: sometimes creativity (and great baking!) requires a little chaos!

This recipe was inspired by kuppet’s ‘Basic plain sponge cake’ on http://www.allrecipes.co.uk.

 

 Victoria Sponge Cake

Yield: One 8 inch cake

Ingredients 

1 1/2 cups of self-raising flour

1 cup of butter (8 oz)

1 cup of granulated sugar

4 eggs, at room temperature

1 tsp of baking powder

For the raspberry cream

1 cup of whipping cream

1/4 cup of sugar

1/2 of a small jar of good quality raspberry jam

Fresh strawberries for decorating

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 F and lightly grease an 8 inch pan.

Using an electric mixer, simply beat all the ingredients together at medium speed until no lumps remain.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 25 minutes, or until the cake is golden brown.

Once the cake has cooled, gently divide it into two equal circular parts, and set the top half aside.

Whip the cream and sugar together until light. Set aside about one third of the whipped cream. Add the jam to the remaining two thirds and whisk to incorporate.

Spread the raspberry cream mixture evenly over the bottom half of the cake and then carefully replace the top half, so that the cake creates a type of sandwich with the raspberry cream.

Spread the rest of the whipped cream over the top of the cake and decorate with fresh strawberries.

Enjoy!

Two Notes:

• If you prefer not to combine the cream with the jam, simply spread them onto the cake separately. I find it is easier to do the jam first and then layer the cream on top.
• If you don’t have self raising flour on hand, you can easily make your own by whisking together 1 cup of flour with 1/2 tsp of salt and 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder. So, for the 1 1/2 cups required for this recipe, I used 1 1/2 cups of flour, 3/4 tsp of salt and 2 1/4 tsp of baking powder.