Pa's Pies and Preserves Plus: Pa's home made Gluten-free Victoria Sponge Cake

    Hi Pa is back with a trial run on baking and icing a gluten-free vegetarian celebration cake.
Several errors glorified this attempt, some were successfully covered up, others are all too obvious for your amusement. Despite this the cake was successful in as much as it tasted great and was devoured with glee.

    So here we go.
   A small edit here, to go with the photo. The very first attempt with the oranges went completely silly due to following quantities in a recipe that turned out to be more suitable for pancakes when put in the tin. The revised recipe uses lemon zest rather than orange but I forgot to take a new picture. So use your imagination please.

Ingredients

for the cake

300g Doves gluten free plain flour

300g   caster sugar
300g   sunflower spread
50g     modified maize starch
6 tsp   baking powder
4        free range eggs
zest    5 lemons
      for the sandwich
apricot jam
buttercream

      for the icing

     Renshaws ready to roll sunflower coloured icing
      +
    butter icing
200g    unsalted butter
350g    icing sugar
1 tsp    lemon extract

Method

Heavy beating

Heat oven to 190^oC
Cream the sunflower spread and sugar until light and fluffy
Beat in the eggs 1 at a time
Beat in the flour, maize starch, baking powder and zest taking care not to overbeat and scraping down from the sides of the bowl
Divide between 2 well oiled 8 inch sandwich tins
Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes
Turn out onto a wire rack to cool

Make the buttercream

Put the butter in a bowl and beat until light and fluffy
Stir in the icing sugar and lemon extract until evenly mixed
Beat until light and smooth

Decorating the cake

Slice off the tops of the two sponges to give you a flat topped cake
Spread the jam on the cut top of one sponge and buttercream on the cut top of the other
Turn one onto the other giving you a filled flat topped sandwich
Clean off any excess filling with a knife
Spread the icing across the top of the cake and around the sides
Smooth off with a palette knife and allow to dry off
Roll out the ready to roll icing between 2 sheets of baking paper
Cut out your chosen decorative shapes, I used simple heart shape cookie cutters
Apply to the cake in your chosen motif

The Final Product more tasty than beautiful

Now to my mistakes! Well the sponge tops collapsed a little in the final few minutes of cooking, I was fortunately able to cover this because the tops were sliced off anyway to make the sandwich. I think this was caused because the cake mix was too moist, a problem we have previously encountered using gluten-free flour, so do assess your mix and add a little more flour if necessary to get a stiff batter. Also avoid over-beating as I mention in the Method, this was my first time with an electric mixer rather than my little food ninja whisking by hand and I may have got a little overenthusiastic, which I am reliably informed can cause sponge collapse. Always best to use your ninja I think. With the icing; three points.

Butter icing and ready to roll icing are not a good combination
If using a wet palette knife to smooth the butter icing make sure you give plenty of drying time before adding your decorations.
Roll the icing between baking parchment, do not oil your rolling pin to prevent sticking.

As you can see in the pic breaking these three points gives shiny hearts that are dragging the butter icing down under their weight. All in all I ended up with a messy finish but fortunately a tasty cake. I did wonder if I had added to much lemon but was reliably informed by one daughter that you can never add too much lemon. Like garlic, or cinnamon in their appropriate dishes. So thanks to all three daughters and Tich the dog for the unanimous thumbs up for this cake and a message to you readers, mistakes and errors may creep into your baking, so top class flavouring is essential if the finished product is to rise above them. So get baking folks and try to learn from my mistakes rather repeat them but remember to always cook the food you love and love the food you cook. Love bakes and bites from Pa -->