A Classic Victoria Sponge

This is a gorgeous easy sponge recipe that a friend gave me and it  takes minutes to make. I baked this over the long weekend to take to a friend we were visiting who has just had a new baby.   I am in baking mode at the moment so bear with me, the next few posts will be some quick and easy Indian savoury bites, onion bhajis and the like, so watch this space.

For this very lovely sponge, I used two 20 cm cake tins.

For each sponge -;

1 Cup Plain Flour
3/4 Cups of Castor sugar
3 Eggs
3 Tbl melted butter
2 Tbl milk
2 Tsp baking powder

Raspberry Jam
Fresh whipped cream

1. Place the flour, eggs, sugar, butter and milk into an electric mixing bowel and beat on high for 3-4 min

2. Add the baking powder and beat on a low setting just to combine

3.  P our into  a greased and lined 20 cm tin  and bake in a pre heated oven @ 190 c for  25-30 min or until the cake springs back when lightly touched.

4. leave in the tin for 5 min and then turn out on a wire rack to cool.

When both cakes are cold, spread the jam and then the whipped cream and sandwich together, dust with icing sugar and you are done!

 

Enjoy

 

Till next time

 

Ashia

Taste Magazine

I am so excited about having another food feature published! This time in Taste magazine, the June issue is out now in the shops.

It's so great to see my family recipes in print, my parents are so proud to see them as well, and I am sending a couple of copies home to the UK for them to have.

Wouldn't it be great to get my book published? I have so many family recipes handed down to me that I would include in my book, so that everyone can enjoy them, and I can have them in print for my children to cherish and cook when they get older.

Watch this space, but for now I am thrilled to have been a part of Taste.

Enjoy reading it!

Till next time

Ashia

Celebration Cake

One of my friends asked me if I would bake a cake for her daughter's 18th birthday.  Initially I was a little hesitant as, although I love baking (& cooking) I really hadn't delved into baking and decorating celebration cakes for other people.

She had a design in mind and wanted a vanilla sponge cake.  So I started by baking 3 vanilla sponges, a lovely fool proof sponge that is also the one I used, for my next blog entry of a classic Victoria sponge.

 

The next step was mixing the 3 tones of pink, I did veer slightly away from the picture below, instead of 4 rows of roses I stuck with 3 and the tone of my pink was slightly different . I used a butter cream icing and used 1.5 kg of icing sugar!

I started with  crumb coating the cake with plain icing and then used the darker pink at the bottom and then lighter in the middle and then ending with an even lighter tone on the top of the cake.

 

I must say the result was fabulous, it looked very pretty, and she was thrilled!

 

One gorgeous rosette cake fit for any celebration, this time an 18th birthday.

Enjoy!

Till next time

Ashia