Week 1: Victoria Sponge

Before the baking

The first episode is always cake week, so it obviously makes sense that I start by making a cake. In my head I hear Paul Hollywood saying “sponge cake” and what better way to do that than by making a classic Victoria Sandwich. Even better, this requires me to make two sponge cakes. Not gonna lie though, this has two things going against me. 1) I’m picky about my fruity desserts, especially cake, and this is not a choice for me. 2) This thing looks so dry, and maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but the lack of filling and frosting is not a selling point for me. Hopefully my judge is prepared for Mary Berry’s Victoria Sponge.

I like how simple Paul Hollywood’s recipe is on his site, but I opted for the real OG Mary Berry’s recipe. I do agree with Paul that adding whipped cream does sound more pleasant.

After the baking

It looks like cake and it is edible! Did I mess up? YES. Here is a quick list of the issues I faced:

1. I only had salted butter, and I don’t think that’s a problem… Jana agrees, she always uses salted butter for all her baking. Maybe I will buy some unsalted butter to do a comparison bake and to do the recipe precisely.
2. The recipe called for self-rising flour, which isn’t the most common flour to have around (I used Kirkland organic all-purpose flour). I even went to the store considering buying it, but it was bleached, enriched, and $9, so I opted out of that. Was that a mistake? Possibly, because self-rising flour has a lower protein content and is finer, which means less gluten and a softer crumb.
3. I only had one 20cm cake pan or two 24cm springform cake pans. Given my time constraints, I went for the two springform cake pans so I could bake them at the same time. This is likely why my cakes look a lot flatter than they should have. Probably should have used the 20cm so the thickness was correct.
4. Do you keep pectin around? Neither do I. Jam sugar has pectin in it and I certainly did not have that lying around. I read that half a lemon would do the trick and honestly I think it worked. I was happy with the result of my jam.
5. It was hot outside and got real hot in our kitchen. The buttercream never fully held its structure, and that could be from either the heat or I added too much milk. Honestly could have been the milk, but I’ll blame the heat.
6. Didn’t have a good piping bag, so that struggled a little.

That’s just the short list of what went wrong, because if Paul Hollywood was watching me there would have been 10x corrections. Overall I am stoked that I have something to present, and in a technical challenge I might be somewhere in the middle of the ratings, maybe? I’m no Jasmine (series 16) or Jürgen (series 12), but in a few weeks I might be close!

My review of the cake

Remember it’s unclear if I actually baked this correctly. Additionally, I am not a jam-in-desserts type of person, so this is a stretch for me. Definitely a little over baked, so it was better the next day after absorbing some moisture from the buttercream and jam. The sponge texture was confusing for me: it actually tasted like I bit into a sponge, and I did not enjoy that sensation. Buttercream is already pretty sweet, and paired up next to the jam it was double the sweetness in one small spot. I like that Paul Hollywood adds whipped cream to his recipe, since that would have helped tone down the sweetness a little. Overall I enjoyed this cake more than I anticipated. I made many mistakes and learned from them. Lots of googling. Maybe I should screenshot my Google searches during my bake sessions. Lol

Tune in for next week.