An American Attempts Foreign Recipes: Victoria Sponge 🏴
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This post is part of my new An American Attempts Foreign Recipes series, where I take a crack at cooking projects inspired by my travels to other countries and try to “Americanize” recipe instructions for those of us who don’t know what things like “clotted cream” and “grams” are.
This week: the Victoria Sponge!
After hiking Hadrian’s Wall in England, I returned home to the United States with a whole list of new favorite sweets! If you followed my stories on Instagram at the time, you know I was on a mad rampage hunt to try every single chocolate candy and weird “crisp” flavor I could get my hands on that are hard to come by in America: Cadbury products, orange chocolate KitKats, prawn-flavored Pringles, you name it! Because I am an adult who makes responsible decisions about my health.
Alright I have tried #Cadbury’s Twirl, Crunchie, TimeOut, and whatever the caramel one is called. So far I’m calling Crunchie as my favorite, I like the honeycomb texture. Have I covered all the best ones? PS @RTWBarefoot the ruby KitKat was just ok 🤷🏼♀️ pic.twitter.com/SYuyZpVNkC
— The Detour Effect (@TheDetourEffect) September 10, 2019
Another of my favorite discoveries was all the little baked goods the English have at teahouses, many of which dotted the trail. I am an avid binge-watcher of Great British Bake-Off, so the fact that these treats were real shouldn’t have come as a surprise. I’ll always remember one cafe where they poured cream into the bottom of the serving plate that the cake sits on, so it soaks into the cake – the British have leveled up the game! Another fun meal was at Vindolanda Roman Fort where, after exploring the ruins and artifacts, I ordered the full afternoon tea treatment with a variety of tiny bite-sized cakes.
Somehow I wasn’t very familiar with the iconic Victoria Sponge Cake, and didn’t recognize it in the flesh when presented to me at the cafe at Vindolanda. It was one of my favorite cakes of the entire trip, so when I got home I Googled, inspiration struck, and I got to work!
Note: while a staple of the English afternoon tea tradition as early as the 1600s, sponge cake possibly originated in Spain in the Renaissance era. Then, the Victorian creation of baking powder in the mid-1800s in England is the differentiating element of what is now called the “Victoria Sponge”.
Recipe
I used the Classic Victoria Sandwich Recipe from BBC Good Food.
Hints for fellow Americans:
- “Icing sugar” is just powdered/confectioner’s sugar.
- You can use regular granulated sugar for “caster sugar” if needed (caster sugar is a bit finer; it may also be called “superfine”, “baker’s”, or “bar” sugar, but the slightly courser granulated sugar will still suffice at a 1:1 ratio). However, I was recently able to find C&H Ultrafine Pure Baker’s Sugar at my local Safeway.
- All-Purpose Flour is not a 1:1 substitution for “self-raising flour”. Note that there is a difference between British “self-raising flour” and American “self-rising flour”. To make British self-raising flour, add 2 teaspoons of baking powder to each cup of All-Purpose Flour. For American self-rising flour, you would add 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt (I have also seen 1/2 tsp of salt occasionally recommended) for each cup of All-Purpose Flour. Whisk or spoon mix them together so it is blended.
- Remember to adjust for altitude if you live somewhere like Colorado!
- 200 grams caster/granulated sugar = 1 cup
- 140 grams icing sugar = 1 + 1/8 cup
- 200 grams flour = 1 + 2/3 cup
- 200 grams butter = 7/8 cup, or 1 + 3/4 sticks
(Depending on what conversion chart you use, sometimes these numbers may look slightly different; for instance, this one doesn’t quite match the one above. Just make sure you’re not doing a general grams to cups conversion alone; you want to look at something that compares grams to cups according to the type of ingredient. Notice that 200g of sugar, flour, and butter all equal different amounts in cups).
Results:
Not half bad! Taste-wise, this turned out exactly how I remembered. I was pretty pleased with myself, and I didn’t even have any major struggles or mishaps during the process. I didn’t know if it would pass the aesthetic test, though, so I took to Twitter and asked the Brits to weigh in. Apparently, this is indeed what it’s supposed to look like! Thank god; this was after my recent disastrous attempt to recreate Slovenian struklji 🙁 I needed a win!
So there you have it, the Classic Victoria Sponge hobbled together by a classless American! We need to adopt this recipe stateside, it’s not very difficult and it has an interesting consistency that isn’t quite like anything in our regular cake rotation. I even almost felt like I was eating something “healthier” than a regular cake (maybe because of the jam, and less icing surrounding the outside of the whole thing?) but that is a bold-faced lie. Pro-tip: avoid glancing at the nutrition stats on that recipe to truly get your full enjoyment out of the cake.
Have you tried the Victoria Sponge? Have you ever tried recreating a favorite dish/bake from your travels? How did it go over? Were you able to find all the ingredients you needed in your country? So far that has been a challenge for some of the recipes I want to do.
Suggestions are welcome as I document more cooking projects inspired by other countries!
Related:
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Josy
As a Brit we would never turn a Victoria sponge into a trifle. The two things are completely different and separate from one another. Also, having made many Victoria sponges myself I have never found them boring and clearly neither do most people who try them. I realise that afternoon tea is a cultural thing especially in the U.K.
I once watched a video in which a lady from the US.A. was attempting to make tea the English way, and was horrified when she proceeded to make it cold and put it in the microwave! We never do that, to make proper English tea,
First pour boiling water into the teapot to warm it.
Add 1 teabag per person
Leave the tea to infuse for a few minutes.
Put some milk in a milk jug
Sugar in the sugar bowl
Place cups, saucers and teaspoons for each person on a tea tray
Place teapot on the same tray and place tray on table or coffee table.
Pour tea into cups
Guests can add their own milk and/or sugar to taste.
Stir and enjoy with Victoria sponge, and/or biscuits 🍪
If you are making tea just for yourself you can simply put a teabag in your cup leave to infuse to suit your own taste
Remove teabag add milk and/or sugar stir and enjoy!
Good tips about the tea, thanks Pat! I have to admit I am one of those terrible people who just heats water in a mug in the microwave for a couple minutes, then puts the tea bag in there and calls it a day haha. I feel guilty every time
Yeeees go you! This looks like a perfect Victoria sponge that you could expect from a proper WI food stand. 🙂
P.s. I’m glad you mastered it, but I should tell you my family often calls this one "BOS" for boring old sponge.
P.p.s the best way to level-up BOS is to make it into a trifle… I think you might love that too!
Woohoo thanks Josy!! It was fun to make and feel connected to my travels from last year. Ooooh a trifle would be yummy, good rec! I’ve never made one before, I love anything with layers. Looks like a fancy parfait.
Gasp at BOS, he does not appreciate the classics haha. Although if I lived where it’s a common offering I’d probably be "over" the Victoria sponge too