The W.I. Victoria Sandwich Cake.
I am scared of cake. Not eating it - no problems there. But leafing through cake recipes gives me goosebumps. I think it's probably the cocktail of nuclear-physics precision and mediaeval superstitions that does it. An eighth of a teaspoon of this, make sure your hands are between 14 and 17 degrees, centrifuge that, only bake this cake under a full moon...
That being said, a homemade cake always beats a supermarket 'palm oil and emulsified di-glycerides of fatty acids' number, and nobody else is about to make me a cake, so I did it myself. There are cake recipes all over the shop at the minute, probably because it's nearly Easter and BLAH BLAH Royal Wedding BLAH heritage BLAH BLAH remember the war BLAH BLAH let's eat cake. The one I chose was a Victoria Sandwich, from delicious. magazine, endorsed by none other than the wise Ents of British baking themselves, the Women's Institute.
I'm not a precise person (nor a superstitious one), but I broke out the electronic scales and Dualit hand-mixer (pretty isn't it), and ensured I avoided walking under any ladders, then got to work on my cake.
The first thing that was ABSOLUTELY MENTAL about this recipe is that I had to weigh the eggs. Eggs! Out of the shell, too, so that was one more bowl to wash up. On second thoughts, though, it makes a lot of sense, as all the other ingredients need to be the same weight as the 3 eggs (160g exactly, if you're wondering), so there really isn't much to remember.
I then carefully weighed everything else out to 160g: self-raising flour, softened butter, caster sugar. The butter and sugar are creamed together until light and fluffy, then the eggs beaten in one at a time, then the flour sifted and folded in. Easy.
The next TOTALLY INSANE job was to weigh it into the lined and greased cake tins (top tip: grease both sides of the baking parchment) to make sure they were even. And guess what? When both were filled, they weighed exactly 320g each, which means I had not wasted a single gram of any ingredient.
Then they were baked for 20 minutes at 180 degrees, until they were golden and a skewer (or piece of spaghetti in this case) came out clean. Then cooled on a wire rack. The W.I. have a lot of advice on not getting cooling-rack marks on your cake, which is apparently a big issue at village shows, but all that was a step too far for me, so I just went for it.
When both cakes are cool, generously cover one with raspberry jam - and it just has to be raspberry, its the rule - and make it into the sandwich we all know and love. But wait, no cream? Frosting? Buttercream? Nope, because that's not the official W.I way to do it. Just jam, and two big old bits of sponge. And caster sugar sprinkled on top. Not icing sugar, you horrible cretin. Caster sugar is the proper, British sugar to put on a cake.
The result? It's quite pretty, in a modest old-fashioned way, and the raspberry jam is delicious, though I can't take credit for that. The sponge is light but quite dry: maybe my butter and sugar weren't creamed enough, or I mispronounced the secret incantation. The caster sugar on top is inspired. It has a lovely crunch.
Big shout out to the Women's Institute. We'll have to do it again sometime.
