Ingredient

Victoria sponge

The Victoria sponge is equal weights of butter, sugar, egg and flour, and it is the standard against which the creaming method is judged. Nothing in it hides a mistake, which is exactly why it is worth learning on.

What creaming does

Beating soft butter with sugar drives air into the fat: the sugar crystals cut into the butter and each cut leaves a tiny bubble behind. Those bubbles are the cake. The raising agent expands them in the oven, but it cannot create them.

So creaming is not mixing. It takes four or five minutes with a mixer and longer by hand, and it is finished when the mixture is noticeably paler, nearly white, and roughly doubled in volume. Under-creaming is the commonest cause of a heavy sponge.

The butter must be genuinely soft — a finger should sink in easily — but not melted or oily. Melted butter holds no air at all.

The method

1. Line the tins and heat the oven first. A creamed batter should not sit about waiting.
2. Cream the soft butter and caster sugar until pale and fluffy. Give it longer than feels necessary.
3. Beat the eggs in one at a time, with a spoonful of the flour alongside each. The flour prevents the batter curdling as the water in the egg meets the fat.
4. Sift the remaining flour and baking powder over and fold in gently with a large metal spoon. Stop the moment it is combined.
5. Divide between the tins by weight if you want two even layers. Level the tops, and hollow the centres very slightly.
6. Bake in the middle of a moderate oven, around 180°C. Do not open the door for the first three-quarters of the time.
7. It is done when it is golden, shrinking slightly from the sides, and springs back when pressed lightly in the middle.

Why cakes sink and dome

• Sunk in the middle — the door was opened early, the oven is too cool, or there is too much raising agent. See sunken cake.
• Domed and cracked — the oven is too hot, so the outside set while the middle was still rising. Drop the temperature 10°C.
• Dense and heavy — under-creamed, or over-folded, or the eggs went in too fast and curdled the batter.
• Dry — overbaked, or too much flour. See dry cake.
• Peaked and tough — over-mixed after the flour went in. Gluten has developed where it should not.

Getting the details right

Room-temperature eggs

Cold eggs shock the creamed butter and curdle it. Sit them in warm water for ten minutes if you forgot.

Caster, not granulated

Finer crystals cut more air into the butter and dissolve properly.

Self-raising or plain plus baking powder

Either. Roughly two teaspoons of baking powder per 200g plain flour.

Tin size

Two 20cm tins for the classic. A deeper single tin needs a lower oven and much longer.

Filling

Raspberry jam and nothing else is the traditional version; jam and cream is the modern one. Buttercream makes it a different cake.

Common questions