Happy Easter! Mini Egg Victoria Sponge Cake

Happy Easter to all!

I baked a traditional Victoria Sponge double-layered cake, added buttercream to the top and decorated it with mini eggs. A perfect Easter treat after our lovely Sunday roast!

The mini eggs were a perfect touch and it really went down a treat in my household. It was completely gone within 24 hours!

For this cake I used my standard Victoria Sponge recipe. I have reposted it here for you to enjoy. Click here if you want to see the original recipe!

Ingredients:
200g Butter
200g Caster Sugar
200g Self Raising Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tbsp Vanilla Extract (optional)
4 Eggs
2tbsp Milk
Filling;
140g Icing Sugar
100g Butter
1 tsp Vanilla Extract (optional)
Raspberry Jam (in this recipe I used redcurrant!)


Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees and line two 20cm cake tins with butter.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together, then add the flour and eggs and beat until fully mixed. Add the milk if necessary and vanilla extract if desired.
3. Spread evenly between the tins and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Leave to cool upside down before decorating.
4. For the filling; mix the sugar and butter together. Spread over the bottom of one of the sponges. Spread the jam on the bottom of the second sponge.
5. Place the sponge with the jam on top of the butter icing sponge.
6. Decorate with more buttercream on top, and place the mini eggs on top as appropriate. There can be as many or as little as you like! You can also place cream on the sides of the cake, it depends on what look you are going for.

Enjoy!

Traditional Victoria Sponge

This has to be one of the prettiest cakes I have made to date, and it is traditionally British which makes it better!

Victoria Sponge Sandwich Cake with Fruits

Ingredients:
200g Butter
200g Caster Sugar
200g Self Raising Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tbsp Vanilla Extract (optional)
4 Eggs
2tbsp Milk
Filling;
140g Icing Sugar
100g Butter
1 tsp Vanilla Extract (optional)
Raspberry Jam

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees and line two 20cm cake tins with butter.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together, then add the flour and eggs and beat until fully mixed. Add the milk if necessary and vanilla extract if desired.
3. Spread evenly between the tins and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Leave to cool upside down before decorating.
4. For the filling; mix the sugar and butter together. Spread over the bottom of one of the sponges. Spread the jam on the bottom of the second sponge.
5. Place the sponge with the jam on top of the butter icing sponge.
6. Decorate with berry fruits (in this example, raspberries, strawberries and blueberries were used) if desired and finish with icing sugar over the top.

Candy Crush Saga Cake

I produced this cake for my mother's birthday. I took a simple Victoria Sponge cake recipe and decorated it with fondant icing for the decoration. I even personalised the 'level' and 'score' to fit my mother's age and birthday!

For this cake, I used a deep rectangle cake tray, but any cake tin can in theory be used.

Ingredients:
150g Butter
150g Caster Sugar
150g Self Raising Flower
3 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla extract
Fondant Icing
Food Colouring
Icing Tube

Method
1. Preheat oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/ gas 4.
2. Using an electric hand whisk, mix the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy.
3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with the vanilla extract, then gradually beat in to the butter mixture, adding a little of the flour.
4. Sift over the remaining flour and gently fold in until just combined.
5. Pour the cake mix into the cake tin.
6. Bake for about 20 minutes or until risen and golden. Cool in the tins for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and set aside to cool.

7. Meanwhile, roll out white fondant icing and apply to the cake when cool.

8. This cake was decorated with pink fondant icing (dyed with food colouring) and the shapes were made from other coloured fondant icing. The writing was done with the icing tube.

'By the Seaside' Cake - Horse themed

This cake was mainly designed for a competition where a cake had to be baked that was horse-themed. I decided to decorate a simple one-tiered victoria sponge cake as a beach and added on miniature toy model horses to fit the category!

Ingredients:
Miniature model horses (edible or non-edible)
200g butter
200g icing sugar
Blue food colouring

**please note more or less icing may need to be made depending on the size of the cake**

Method
1. Mix the butter and the icing sugar together to create the butter icing.
2. Roughly split the butter icing mixture in two and add blue food colouring to one of the mixtures until the desired shade is achieved.
3. Smooth the non-coloured, sandy coloured buttercream onto the cake first, only covering roughly one half to two thirds of the cake.
4. On the remaining parts of the cake with no icing, use the blue icing for the sea.
5. More blue icing can be layered up to create the effect of waves.
6. Decorate with the horses as necessary (optional!)

Mini Victoria Sponge Cakelets

These are great to make for a summer's day evening desert! They are also great fun to make and look extremely cute.

Ingredients:

150g (5½oz) unsalted butter plus extra for greasing

 150g (5½oz) caster sugar

 3 medium eggs

 1tsp vanilla extract

 150g (5½oz) self-raising flour

 50g Icing Sugar (butter icing)

50g butter (butter icing)

 8-10tbsp strawberry jam

 Icing sugar, for dusting

Method

1.       Preheat oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/ gas 4.

2.       Using an electric hand whisk, mix the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy.

3.        In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with the vanilla extract, then gradually beat in to the butter mixture, adding a little of the flour.

4.        Sift over the remaining flour and gently fold in until just combined.

5.       Pour the cake mix into large cake tins.

6.       Bake for about 20 minutes or until risen and golden. Cool in the tins for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and set aside to cool. 

7.       Once cool, cut out circular shapes using a round cookie cutter.

8.       Make the butter icing and spread on half of the of the sponge bases, top with a spoonful of jam and sandwich together with the remaining sponges.

9.       Dust each with icing sugar to serve.

Recipe altered from - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1379570/Recipe-Mini-Victoria-sponge-cakes.html