Victorian Sandwich

Picture this: Jinghan sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of crumbs before her. She is licking jam off her fingers, and breathing in the hot aroma of English Breakfast tea. Bliss.

The Victorian Sandwich is a delicious vanilla sponge with sugary jam in the middle. What's more, it is dead easy to make. So long as you have a food processor and can measure ingredients, you are set. The food processor came out second best, but the cake is good.

Recipe from Jules Stranbridge’s novel Sugar and Spice, published in 2009 by Little Black Dress, an imprint of Headline Publishing Group

Ingredients

• 225g (9oz) unsalted butter
• 225g (9oz) caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs
• 225g (9oz) self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3-4 tablespoons milk

Method

Grease and line 2 x 18cm (7inch) tins and preheat oven to 180 Celcius/350 Farenheit (160 Celcius for fan forced). Put all ingredients in food processor except the milk and process until you get a smooth batter. Pour the milk in gradually through the funnel until the mixture has soft dropping consistency. Pour into tins and bake for approximately 25 minutes or until the cakes are coming away at the edges or springy to touch. Leave in tins on wire rack for 10mins before turning out to cool completely. Spread lashings of jam in the middle and a sprinkle of caster sugar on the top.

Jinghan says: 

This cake needs to be baked straight away while the mixture is still fluffy and full of air. I only had one tin so I put all the mixture in one tin, my cake took 45mins to cook. If you grease the sides of a non-stick tin well the cake will turn out flatter. And if you have a tin lined with baking paper I spread the mixture so that it rises up about 2cm at the edges to get a flatter finish. The best way to cut a cake is to score a groove around the edge at an even height, fit a thread in the groove (I used nylon thread) and pull the thread through the cake.