Easy Abby Icing on the Sponge Cake Lawlor

This is a classic sponge cake recipe, a great start to cake-making. It can be varied really easily to make different flavours. This is also the one to use for an English Victoria Sandwich, which I'll give instructions for below.

I'll give you the traditional method of creaming the butter and sugar really well to incorporate air in the main recipe, and I'll also give instructions for the 'all-in-one' method (favoured by Mary Berry) in the Tips section, which is much faster!

You'll also find instructions for how to grease and line a tin if you need some pointers, tips to prevent or fix curdled cake batter, and ideas for flavouring your cake.

Below the cake recipe are instructions for making glacé icing, the easiest and quickest icing to make, so you can make a cake you're proud of in no time!

Basic Sponge Cake

Ingredients

Serves 6-8

• 175g (6oz) butter, room temperature
• 175g (6oz) caster sugar
• 175g (6oz) self-raising flour, sifted
• 3 eggs, room temperature, beaten

Traditional Method

1.First, preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F and grease and line a 20cm/8in diameter spring-form/loose-bottomed tin or two 18cm/7in diameter sandwich tins. See Tips below for help if you've never done this!

2. Beat the butter to make sure it's really soft first, then add the sugar and beat until light in colour and fluffy (I first learnt to do this with a wooden spoon, but now I use electric beaters!).

3. Add beaten eggs about a tbsp at a time, beating well after each addition.

4. Sift the flour into the bowl and fold in with a spatula.

5. Pour the mixture into your prepared tin(s) and smooth the top.

6. Bake for 20 mins, until the cake is risen, golden in colour and starting to come away from the edges of the tin. Leave to cool in tin for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Tips

Greasing and Lining the tin: Stand the cake tin on a sheet of baking paper and draw around the base. Cut out the circle. Grease the sides and bottom of the tin using a butter wrapper, or a pastry brush with some soft butter or oil. Place the circle of baking paper in the bottom of the tin. Sprinkle flour around the sides and shake out the excess.

If the mixture starts to curdle when you add the egg, then either the butter and sugar aren't creamed properly or you added too much egg too fast. This can make a heavy cake. Don't worry if this happens though, just mix in a spoonful of flour to stabilise it, then add alternate spoonfuls of egg and flour until it has all been added. Even if it still looks curdled, cook it anyway, it will still be nice!

All-in-One Method

Mary Berry loves this method!

Instead of steps 1-4 above, put all of the cake ingredients above plus 1 tsp baking powder into a mixing bowl, a food processor or mixer. Beat just until everything is incorporated. Over-beating works the gluten in the flour and can make a cake heavy. Pour the mixture into your prepared tin(s), level it out, and bake as above.

Once cool, this cake can be frozen whole or in slices, double wrapped in cling wrap.

Variations

Vanilla Flavour: Add 1 tsp vanilla extract to the cake batter when you fold in the flour.

Lemon Flavour: Add the grated zest of 1-2 lemons to the cake batter, then make glacé icing using lemon juice instead of water (see below).

Chocolate Flavour: Add 25g(1oz) cocoa to the flour before folding in to the butter, sugar and eggs.

Classic Victoria Sponge: Bake the cake in two 18cm (7in) sandwich tins. When cool, place one cake upside down on a plate or cake stand and spread with strawberry jam (you can also add a layer of whipped cream or buttercream on top of the jam if you like). Place the other cake on top (right side up) and dust with caster sugar.

Basic Glacé Icing

This is the simplest and quickest icing to make!

Ingredients

Makes 200ml

• 200g/7oz Icing sugar
• 2 tbsp hot water (approximately)

Method

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add the water a little at a time, until it is the consistency you like.

A runnier icing will make a more transparent glaze and run down the sides of the cake, a thicker icing (with less liquid) will be more opaque and hold its shape (and sprinkles!) better.

Variations

Add a couple of drops of whatever food colouring you like!

Add flavours:

• a couple of drops of an essence like peppermint essence or rosewater
• use lemon, orange or pineapple juice instead of the water,
• mix 1 tsp instant coffee into the water
• sift 25g/1oz cocoa powder with the icing sugar before mixing in the water.

You also might like to try my recipe for Buttercream Icing!

For tips on decorating cakes for special occasions read my post: Easy Cake Decorating Tips

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Source: https://www.joskitchennotebook.com/basic-sponge-cake/

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