Great British Bake Off Series 1, Episode One
Technical Challenge – Mary Berry’s Perfect Victoria Sandwich
So, Victoria Sponge or Victoria Sandwich, a quintessentially British cake, closely tied to High Tea. Not a cake many US people would have made or eaten. It looks simple, and tasty!!
Pretty easy to set up, small ingredient list. Self rising flour? Weird. It’s just all purpose flour with salt and baking powder added. I looked up a recipe and knocked it up really quick.
I knew from the get go I had a problem. My butter was not room temperature and it needed to be creamed with the butter. Bonus – I go to the gym on Saturday mornings and my arms were wrecked.
(Sonic – You had T Rex arms! You can’t cream butter with T Rex arms!)
I should have just used my mixer but the recipe was an all in one (throw everything together) rather than a cream then add flour recipe. I would have been better served to diverge from the recipe to fix what I knew would be a big problem than to stick to a recipe that would be problematic.
My mix was not good. I was so worried about over mixing, that I didn’t get it anywhere near smooth enough.
I did remember to deploy my oven thermometer and actually get my oven fully preheated and to the correct temperature.
I got the sponges into the oven. My tins are 9 inches across and the recipe calls for 8 inch tins. I didn’t adjust my baking time. I was also cautious about opening the oven early as cakes _will_ fall if they get a cold draft too soon during baking.
They were golden! But unevenly so. The outside edges of each sponge were darker. I need to spin and adjust bakes to keep them browning evenly (look how much I’ve learned already). I let them cool and then applied jam. It seemed like a lot but next time I would use more.
I didn’t have caster sugar. Sometimes this is ok and granulated will work. This is not the case for decorating the top of this cake. It was grainy and weird. When we cut into the cake it was crunchy. Eeek. It should be soft! The crumb was large and very irregular.
Now, it tasted fine but it was really not correct. I guess I’ll have to make it again!
-fh