I am back now and hope that all baking disasters are firmly behind me, especially as I had the idea of baking along with The Great British Bake Off each week.I will only be doing one of the challenges each week, not the signature, technical and showstopper, I do not think my waistline would thank me for that!
The first week was cake and so I decided to do my signature victoria sponge. As Mary said she wanted no plain and boring jam sponges, I made mine a lemon and raspberry victoria sponge. It is a lemon and vanilla sponge filled with lemon curd, raspberries and vanilla chantilly cream.
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Lemon and raspberry victoria sponge
3 eggs, weighed with shells, room temperature
Same weight of butter
Same weight of sugar
Same weight of self raising flour
Tsp vanilla paste
zest of lemon
Tsp baking powder
Lemon curd
Raspberries
Single cream
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
Grease and line the base of two 20cm loose bottomed cake tins. Preheat the oven to 160C/140C FAN.
Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy then beat in the vanilla, lemon zest and eggs for a further minute. Add the flour and baking powder and beat until just combined. Do not overbeat
Divide the mixture equally between the tins and bake for. 25-30 mutes until golden and springy.
Leave to cool in the tins for 15 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Once the cakes are cool sandwich them together with plenty of lemon curd, vanilla cream and fresh raspberries.
Confession time. This cake tastes absolutely beautiful, I urge you to try it but there were a couple of niggles, these would hopefully not have seen me kicked off the bake off but I certainly would not be winning star baker!
Firstly in true bake off style I dropped my cake. Not onto the floor but a couple of inches onto the worktop, while it was still in the tin. My beautiful risen cake now had a little dip in it. I simply turned it over hoping the filling would hide it...
Secondly I have a super hot oven and have accepted that the edges of my cake will brown. I know Paul and Mary are not fans of this, who was it who grated off their dark edges last year?
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| Dark edges! |
Bread next week, always and interesting one!
Great idea baking along with the bake off. I have the same issue with my hot oven - brown edges. Your cakes sounds delicious - definitely not boring, lovely flavour combinations. Looking forward to seeing your bread efforts - that would definitely be when I would be kicked out if I was in the show!
ReplyDeleteHave you solved the brown edges dilemma? Hmm I think I would be kicked off if I had to do anything artistic, I could not have done last years sculpture from gingerbread!
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