Another month and another birthday cake or two, or in actual fact 6!!
Mum had ummed and arhhed for a couple of weeks about a cake for her friend Janet. She knew I was pretty hectic with work and everything else that's being going on down here in the Cotswolds, then she decided that as it was the Other Half's birthday this week, she'd come down and see us and pick up a cake at the same time... Argh... Nothing like a bit of forward planning there, is there Mum?
We're still not ready just yet for some innovative or experimental baking; we're just trying to get the cake bases sorted for the wedding cake at the moment. So far my brother and his fiancee have agreed on the fruit cake base that we went for last month, and its been given the thumbs up. This time, it was the turn of the sponge cake and another attempt at getting the fondant icing on a little better...
Mum had asked for a basic victoria sponge sort of cake. I usually use my standard vanilla cupcake recipe but I thought it might be a little heavy so I made a couple of tweaks here and there, and it seemed to work. Just right, nice and light and moist, a hint vanilla with a good fruity strawberry jam and a silky smooth buttercream.... Hmmm! The lovely ladies and my brother have given the cake the go ahead. Mum thinks it should have more jam in it, but my brother, his fiancee and Janet have all said that they thought it was spot on.
I was also a lot happier with my icing, still having a few problems when sorting out the joins or folds but they were a lot better than Chris' cake. I think the key has been to make sure that my work surface is well dusted with icing sugar to stat with and to not roll the fondant out too thinly... the problem I was finding was I didn't think that the amount of icing that I had rolled out was large enough to cover the cake, when it was actually a lot more than needed. So when the icing was laid over the cake, if I wasn't too careful it would crack and split at the edges. Also, I've been using ready to roll fondant icing and they all vary a fair bit, some of them are really quite sticky before you've even started to knead them, whilst others are a lot smoother and are better for kneading and rolling. The best one I have used at the moment was the Silver Spoon ready to roll icing, unfortunately I've only ever seen it for sale in Sainsburys near work, and then they only had one packet left... When they have more in stock, I'll have to stock up!
For me, the best thing was that the cake looked alot better than the previous cake, and the sponge was a beautiful colour and all layered up nice and neatly!
What You'll Need
Vanilla cupcake mix
or
200g of Vanilla Caster Sugar
200g Butter - cubed and softened, leaving it out for a good couple of hours before makes it alot easier to cream the sugar and the butter together
200g Self-Raising Flour
4 Fresh Eggs - the eggs should ideally be at room temperature, also medium sized eggs as the best for this recipe, larger eggs make the sponge heavier and not as light; plus as usual our eggs were fresh from the farm that morning
1 Tablespoon Vanilla Extract
1 Teaspoon of Baking Powder - this was an addition to the basic cupcake mix, I was hoping that the baking powder would help the sponge to be nice and light; it seemed to work
2 Tablespoons Milk - again an addition to the basic cupcake mix, just to help lighten the sponge, like when I add the milk to the buttercream icing, it helps the creamed butter and sugar to be less heavy and more workable with
Basic vanilla buttercream recipe
Strawberry Conserve - I use Tiptree or Bonne Maman as they are beautifully fruity
What You'll Need to Do
Preheat your oven to about 180-190 degC
Line two sandwich tins with baking parchment on both the base and the sides. Even though my tins are non-stick, I always line them. I've tried before without lining them and my sponges just seem not to rise properly and the shrink away from the sides a fair bit. I find it also stops the sides and base from overcooking.
Add the cubed butter to your chosen mixing bowl, either a large bowl or to the Magimix
Add the caster sugar and cream with the butter
When the butter and sugar is light and fluffy, add the vanilla extract and milk a tablespoon at a time and whisk it well into the creamed mixture, now you can add the eggs one at a time.
The eggs can be beaten in either using a whisk or Magimix, but I tend to prefer to whisk them in by hand. If the mixture starts to curdle add a spoon of flour to help the eggs bind
Sieve the flour and the baking powder into the cake mixture, and gently fold in the flour with a metal spoon, making sure that you don't bash the mixture too much as you want the cake to rise and be light and fluffy
Divide the mixture equally between the two sandwich tins and place in the oven for 20 minutes. When your time is up, test the cakes with a skewer or cocktail stick to make sure they are cooked properly and you don't have raw mixture in the centre still. The skewer should come out nice and clean and not coated in sticky mix.
When you're happy, take your cakes out of the oven, and allow them to cool before turning them out on to a wire cooling rack.
Once the cakes are completely and properly cooled you're ready to build up your Victoria sponge cake....
Depending on how you are decorating your Victoria sponge, you may either turn over your top layer so that you have a flat surface if you are icing the cake, or leave it top side up if you are going for the more traditional look Victoria sponge.
If you are going for a flat top, you may also want to trim some of the top of each layer so that when the two are layered together they are not sitting proud of each other. I'm not particularly good with cutting straight, I'm a leftie (handed) and it all goes a bit wobbly so I brought a Wilton Cake Leveller to give me a helping hand. I wouldn't say its perfect but its a lot better than if I was let loose with a knife a no guide.
Spread the base layer with a good thick layer of buttercream, and then spread the bottom side of the top layer with a good layer of your chosen strawberry conserve. Carefully place the top layer onto of the bottom layer, trying the layers level, especially if you are going to ice the cake afterwards
If you are leaving the Victoria sponge in all its naked glory, dust the top layer with a sprinkling of icing sugar
If you are icing the cake, you will need cover the top and sides of the cake with a thin layer of buttercream to help the fondant icing stick to the cake. You can find out about the fondant icing in the birthday fruit cake posts
With this cake, I just decorated the top of the cake with some flowers cut out from the remaining fondant that I coloured up, added a silver sugar ball and when they had dried stuck them to the top of the cake with a little buttercream
