Tuesday 24 June 2014

Victoria Sponge Cake with Rhubarb Jelly and Lemon Cream

As in Queen Victoria, and this was supposedly one of her favorite cakes.

I made mine with a rhubarb jelly filling and lemon cream, it was amazing.

Victoria Sponge Cake


Pretty enough for a Queen
Ingredients:

Cake:

  • 1 Cup Butter, at room temperature, cut into small cubes
  • 2 Eggs, at room temperature about 30 minutes
  • 1/2 Cup Milk, at room temperature about 30 minutes
  • 1 Cup Flour
  • 1 1/2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
  • 1 Cup Sugar
  • 1 Tablespoon Vanilla
  • Cooking spray

Rhubarb Jelly:

  • 3-4 Stalks Fresh Rhubarb
  • (Or about 1 1/2 Cup Berries/Fruit of your choice)
  • 1 Teaspoon Lemon Juice
  • 1-2 Teaspoons water
  • 2-4 Tablespoons Sugar

Lemon Cream:

  • 250ml Whipping Cream
  • 2-3 Tablespoons Lemon Instant Pudding Mix

Special Tools:
  • 8 inch Spring Form Pan
  • Electric mixers
Instructions:

Cake:

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
  2. Line the bottom on the spring form pan with parchment paper. Spray the parchment and sides of the pan well with cooking spray.
  3. In a small bowl sift the flour with the baking powder. Set aside.
  4. In a stand mixer or large bowl with electric hand mixers cream the cubed room temperature butter with the sugar until well blended and smooth. The butter shouldn't look grainy with sugar. This takes at least 5 minutes of mixing, often even longer.
  5. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each egg. Continue to mix the batter on a low speed for about 3 minutes to ensure everything incorporates.
  6. Still on a low mixing speed, slowly  and gradually add the flour mixture to the butter, sugar, egg mixture. Mixing until just combined.
  7. Slowly pour the milk in while continuing to mix on low speed. Add the vanilla last and mix in just long enough to incorporate.
  8. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, spreading into an even layer. 
  9. Bake in preheated oven until set and a cake tester inserted comes out clean, between 20 and 35 minutes.
  10. Allow cake to cool in pan 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edges to separate the cake from the pan and loosen the spring form. Allow to finish cooling on a rack.
  11. You can now enjoy the cake as is, frost it, dust with icing sugar or continue reading to fill the cake with jelly, and make lemon cream.


Rhubarb Jelly:

Special Tools:
  • Immersion Blender

  1. Wash the rhubarb and cut off about an inch from leaf end and root end of each. Roughly chop into small pieces.
  2. In a medium sauce pan add all of the ingredients listed (Start with about 2 tablespoons of sugar, add more at the end if needed) and slowly simmer over a low heat. Stir occasionally.
  3. When Rhubarb begins to soften, gently mash it with a spoon or fork and continue to cook down until everything feels pretty soft when you stir.
  4. If your immersion blender is heat safe you can blend it right away, just pulse through the jelly until smooth. OR you can leave the jelly to cool for a while, or if you don't care if the jelly is really smooth you can use as is.
  5. Jelly is now ready to go. You can use it as a sauce for dessert or just like normal store-bought jelly on toast in the morning.

To Fill a Cake with Jelly:

  1. Place cooled cake on a flat level surface, like a cutting board or plate.
  2. Using a large cake knife, carefully but with confidence cut the cake horizontally, right across the middle as best you can. Separating the cake into a top layer and bottom layer.
  3. Leave the bottom layer where it is.
  4. Ok now life gets a little tricky because we have to move cake around without breaking it. I used a spare spring form pan bottom as a giant cake lifter this time. 
  5. Gently working with both hands to lift and slide the top layer of the cake onto the pan/lifter implement of choice.
  6. Transfer the one layer of cake CUT SIDE UP on to your cake platter (Plate) that you plan to serve/present the cake on. It will now be the bottom layer of your finished cake.
  7. Next take the jelly you plan to fill the cake and using only a tablespoon at a time, smooth a thin layer of jelly across the entire surface of the bottom layer of plated cake. 
  8. Being careful to not allow the jelly to seep over the edges of the cake.
  9. Transfer the remaining layer of cake onto the jelly covered layer, CUT SIDE DOWN.  Some jelly may come out the sides during this process, that's alright.
  10. You can now enjoy the cake! Or dust with confectioners sugar, or frost it, or continue on to make Lemon Cream

Lemon Cream:

Special Tools:
  • Piping bag and Star Tip

  1. In a Stand Mixer on low speed, or electric mixers on medium, whip the cream with the instant pudding mix. Continue to whip until stiff peaks form. Being careful not to overmix and split the cream.
  2. Fill a piping bag fitted with a star tip with the whipped cream and pipe stars across the entire top surface of the cake, or leave a "doughnut hole" like I did to fill with cream.
  3. Lemon Cream is an excellent addition to almost anything you want to eat in summer. Promise.

Enjoy!

Notes:

Best dessert I have made. Or at least my favorite. I am just not big on most desserts but this one was a delight in every bite.

Also I know I have hated on things that come in boxes or that are premade and such before, so seeing instant lemon pudding mix in recipe is a little strange for me. But instant pudding isn't the worst thing on the shelves in a grocery store, and making pudding from scratch is way more work than I want to do for just pudding. . . So I justify this one as being an acceptable compromise, Plus making things taste like lemon only using lemons takes an absurd number of lemons so this is also cost effective. WIN WIN!

PS: Pretty sure the Queen never had her cake quite like this. She missed out.

Other Places:

In case you wanted something savory instead of sweet:

Cheese Puffs

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Have any thoughts? Questions? Comments? Or did you try this?