Victoria Sandwich Cake/ Victoria Sponge Cake

Victoria Sandwich Cake/ Victoria Sponge Cake

A delicious cake that has history around it!

You know I love anything that has a history so this one was to be baked. 

So let’s see the history here…

Careful ladies you are treading royal path here as

Queen Victoria lent her name to this traditional cake. She was said to have greatly enjoyed with afternoon tea.

This cake is often confused with sponge cake, it is baked in to shallow tins, sandwiched together with jam and finished on the top with a light dusting of castor sugar.

Try a little butter cream sandwiched in along with the jam filling.

The cake can be made in one tin too but apparently this method of using two tins to bake it gives better texture. The one tin has large air holes.

Surprised I “#FireUpYourOven"  to make this cake? I had takers for it? Actually the person who finished it was my elder one Apeksha. For some reason, I do not remember why she was sulking, had not eaten anything since morning. No amount of cajoling was working so I let her be.

In the evening at around 4 pm she was hungry and came out of her room to see this cake. She sat down and finished it with that her usually sunny nature came out too! Even she could not remember why she was sulking!!

I forget what book I have copied it from. Once I go back to the library I will get the name and update it.

Victoria Sandwich Cake/ Victoria Sponge Cake

Victoria Sandwich Cake/ Victoria Sponge Cake

Victoria Sandwich Cake/ Victoria Sponge Cake

Ingredients:

• 115g butter
• 115 g castor sugar
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 115 g self-rising flour
• Jam a little extra castor sugar

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.
• Cream the butter until pale, light and fluffy.
• Fold in the eggs and flour a little at a time until totally incorporated
• Spoon the mix evenly into 2 greased 18cm/7in sandwich tins, smoothing the top gently.
• Place in the center of the oven, until well risen and golden.
•  The top when lightly pressed should spring back.
• This will take approximately 20-30 minutes.
• Remove from the tins and turn onto a cooling rack immediately.
• When completely cold, sandwich together with jam and sprinkle the top lightly with castor sugar.

Victoria Sandwich Cake/ Victoria Sponge Cake

Do come back tomorrow to check out what my friends and I dish out tomorrow...

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 51

An InLinkz Link-up

Hi! First time here? Well then you are Most Welcome! I hope you keep coming back for more here. If you are my regular visitor then Thanks, for you encourage me to experiment more!! I would like you to please click on my link below and like my Facebook Page. I will be happy if you can follow me on on Twitter too!

 

Jam Tarts~ A Sweet Punch

For this month Sweet Punch Ria has chosen Jam Tarts!

My heart sank at the sight of the recipe for it looked like a shortcrust pastry and something that had ended as a mess that I had to bin. I was sure I will sink right under again!!

But since I don’t usually give up easily I decided to try my hand once again. One last time I told myself. Make only a few that you can eat up if there are no takers. And so I did!!

Before we start let me confess that I used not only Ria’s recipe to make the tarts but also what I googled about them for my fear about failing this was quite huge. 

But I was unduly worried for the tarts were a huge success!!

Not only I made it & it got over before I had a decent snap in spite of the jam that I had used was strawberry jam that was lying in the fridge for some time and hence I baked the tarts again today. To tell you how good they tasted my husband, yes the mental diabetic, fetched me the ingredients for the next bake most importantly willingly and relished the tarts… Thanks Ria!!!

Grape Jam

I made Strawberry Jam and posted the recipe. I also mentioned that I made “Grape Jam”. Grape Jam I made was out of black grapes and got a lovely purple colour.

Here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 kg Black grapes (seedless)

A little less than ½ a teacup sugar.

Method:

1.  Remove all the stalks and soak the grapes in salted water of about 1-2 hours. Change the water once in between. (This is to get rid of all the pesticides).

2.  Transfer al l the grapes to a container and pressure cook, 1 whistle.

3.  Cool the grapes and strain them. Reserve the water.

4.  Grind the grapes to a fine paste in the mixer and transfer to a thick bottomed pan. Add the reserved water and the sugar.

5.  Stir and cook on medium flame. Till the mixture thickens a bit.

6.   Lower the flame and now stir continuously till the mixture clumps together. You could perform the plate test here.

7.  Transfer to dry bottles. Take care to keep the bottles on wooden surface while transferring the jam and let it cool on the wooden surface only.

Strawberry Jam

 I enjoy having food with my colleagues in the afternoon. It’s not a big assembly but all the same enjoyable all of us share what we carry and food tastes better and of course you learn new recipes or learn a modification.

Alba had brought “Strawberry Jam” and also “Grape Jam” and of course I had to try it out.

The best part is both the jams don’t need any colour.

I will post the pictures next time I make them.

Ingredients you will need are

450 grms strawberry

225 grms sugar.

Method:

1.   Crush strawberries in the mixer (only one round).

2.   Transfer to a thick bottomed pan and add sugar.

3.    Heat on medium flame till the mixture stars to thicken. Till this point you can stir occasionally.

4.  Once the mixture starts to thicken lower the flame and stir continuously till the mixture clumps together.

5.  Transfer to dry bottles. Take care to keep the bottles on wooden surface while transferring the jam and let it cool on the wooden surface only.

PS. This is the plate test to test the readiness of jam.

In the plate test  pour a small quantity of jam on a cold plate. Chill it in the freezer for 30 seconds. If your jam is ready it will be firm to touch. Remove the pan from heat.