Victoria sponge cake with strawberry jam and whipped cream
Binging with Babish · ♥ 15.3K likes · 456.1K views · 8 min video
Read about layer cakes in the BrightCulinary Book
Timestamp
Ingredients
Method
Techniques
- 600 g fresh strawberries
- 1 whole lemon
- 440 g sugar
Behead and quarter the strawberries into a shallow wide saucepan with the juice of one lemon and the sugar, mix, and macerate at room temperature 30 minutes.
Bring to a simmer and hold over low heat one to one and a half hours, until a spoonful on a briefly frozen dinner plate does not run.
One-bowl Victoria sponge batter
- 340 g sugar
- 340 g self-rising flour
- ½ tsp kosher salt
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 6 whole eggs
- 340 g unsalted butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Sift the sugar, self-rising flour, salt and baking powder together and put them in the bowl of a stand mixer with the eggs, the room temperature butter and the vanilla.
Paddle lightly until homogenous and a smooth batter forms with no dry or wet streaks; no pre-mixing and no adding in stages.
Heat the oven to 350F and line two 10 inch cake pans with parchment.
Divide the batter evenly between the pans, smooth with a rubber spatula and smack the pans down.
Bake at 350F for 20 to 30 minutes until the cakes spring back when poked, then cool completely in the pan.
- 1½ cup heavy cream
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
- 30–40 g powdered sugar
Whip the heavy cream with the vanilla paste and the powdered sugar until just firm enough to hold its shape, without over whipping into large air bubbles.
Smear a little cream on the cake stand as glue and set the less attractive cake round on it.
Assembling and decorating the first cake
Spread whipped cream generously over the concave top and use the bowl shape to hold the strawberry jam, then top with the second round.
- strawberries
- white llamas cake flour
Pipe star-tip dots over the whole surface and set strawberries on them in a decorative pattern.
Variation, the fancified version: the same method with the most expensive iteration of each ingredient. Sift the sugar, then the flour, baking powder and salt, and whisk to combine.
- 36 whole quail eggs
- beurre boudier butter
Variation: crack and beat the 36 quail eggs together before adding them with the vanilla extract and the butter, and beat gently to a smooth, noticeably darker batter.
Variation: bake for the same time in the same oven until the cakes spring back or register 200F at their thickest point.
Variation: leave the unhomogenized milk undisturbed in the fridge overnight, then skim the risen heavy cream off the top.
Letting the cream rise from raw milk
- 600 g Oishi strawberries
- 440 g fancy sugar
Variation: macerate the Oishi strawberries with the fancy sugar 30 minutes, then simmer gently with the juice of one lemon one to one and a half hours.
- 450 g mascarpone cheese
- 125 g powdered sugar
- 1½ tsp whipped cream stabilizer
- 600 g heavy cream
- 3 whole vanilla beans
Variation: beat the mascarpone with the sifted powdered sugar, the stabilizer and the scraped vanilla beans until smooth, then add the hand-harvested cream slowly, scraping the bowl down.
Variation: trim the uneven cake, lay whipped cream as glue, place the cake cut side down, pipe a ring of cream as a wall and fill the void with jam.
Variation: cover the whole cake in whipped cream and scrape the sides off with a bench scraper for a naked cake look, then pipe rosettes of decreasing height in a crescent and arrange quartered and halved strawberries and edible flowers.