Afternoon tea never tasted so good! This is a really easy recipe to remember as it contains equal weights of eggs, butter, sugar and flour. If you want to be really accurate, weigh your eggs (in the shell) before you start and use that weight as the benchmark for the other ingredients. If you are using large eggs you might find that just 3 eggs are close to 200g.
Ingredients
- 200g unsalted butter
- 200g caster sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 4 medium eggs, lightly whisked
- 200g self raising flour
- 6-8 tbsp raspberry jam
- 250ml cream, whipped
- 1 punnet strawberries (optional)
- 2 tbsp icing sugar for dusting
Before you start
Incorporating air into your cake batter (and keeping it there) is the key to sponge cake success.
Here are some key tips:
- Have your eggs and butter at room temperature.
- Measure all your ingredients before you start so you can work quickly.
- Pre-heat the oven
- Triple-sift the flour. Sift onto baking paper and funnel it back into the bowl.
- Prepare your cake tins.
Method
- Pre-heat oven to 170°C.
- Grease and flour 2 x 20cm round cake tins.
- Place the butter, sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl and beat, using an electric mixer or a wooden spoon, until pale and fluffy.
- Add the eggs, a little at a time, beating well between each addition.
- Gently fold in the flour (do not over-work this stage, or your mix will lose air).
- Divide the mixture evenly between the 2 tins and place immediately into the pre-heated oven, on the centre rack.
- Bake for about 20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
- Allow to cool in the tin for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack with a clean tea towel placed over it. Leave the cake to cool completely.
- Spread the jam all over the top of one of the cakes and arrange strawberries on top, if using. Then spread the whipped cream almost to the edge. Place the second cake on top of the first and press down gently until the cream is pushed to the edge.
- Dust the top with icing sugar.
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