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Two layers of butter cake with jam and cream between them, named for a queen who took a slice with afternoon tea. It is not a sponge in the technical sense at all — a true sponge is foamed egg with little or no fat — but a creamed butter cake, and it is the standard by which the creaming method is taught in Britain.
The recipe is famously a ratio rather than a list: equal weights of butter, sugar, egg and self-raising flour. Weigh the eggs, then match everything else to them.
What makes it work
- Weigh the eggs in their shells and use that number four times. Four medium eggs come to about 225 g, which is why the classic recipe reads 8 oz of everything. This is the oldest baker's percentage in English cooking; see baker's percentages.
- Cream for a full four minutes. The air beaten into the butter is a third of the lift; the raising agent only expands bubbles that already exist. See baking fats.
- Add the eggs slowly, and warm. Cold egg into creamed butter curdles the emulsion, and a curdled batter bakes heavy. A spoonful of the flour rescues it.
- Fold the flour, do not beat it. Every extra turn develops gluten and costs tenderness.
- Two tins, not one deep one. A Victoria is defined by the ratio of crumb to filling, and a split deep cake never has flat enough faces.
Ingredients
Two 20 cm tins. Serves 10.
- 225 g unsalted butter, softened
- 225 g caster sugar
- 4 eggs, about 225 g, at room temperature
- 225 g self-raising flour, or plain flour with 10 g baking powder
- 3 g fine salt
- 2 tbsp milk, if needed
Filling:
- 200 g raspberry or strawberry jam — see Fruit Jellies Jam Jellies Butters
- 300 ml double cream, whipped, or 200 g vanilla buttercream
- caster sugar, to dust
Method
Butter and line two 20 cm tins. Heat the oven to 180 °C / 350 °F.
Cream the butter and sugar four minutes until visibly pale and increased in volume. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of the flour with each after the first.
Sift in the remaining flour and the salt and fold with a spatula until just combined. The batter should drop reluctantly from the spoon; loosen with milk if it does not.
Divide by weight between the tins — actually weigh them, or the layers will not match — and level. Bake 20–25 minutes, until risen, golden, and springing back when pressed.
Cool five minutes in the tin, then turn out. Cool completely before filling: jam on the bottom layer, cream over it, second layer on top, sugar dusted over.
Notes
- Jam first, cream second, always. Cream against the jam is a slip plane; jam against the crumb soaks in slightly and holds.
- The Women's Institute rules for a competition Victoria specify jam only, no cream, and no dusting on the outside. Nobody at home follows this.
- Eats best on the day. Unfilled layers freeze for three months.
Elsewhere on the site
Method and theory: Cake recipes · cakes · baking fats · flour
Nearby: pound cake · genoise · birthday layer cake