Cake Thursday: April 16th. The Victoria Sandwich

The custom of Afternoon Tea began in the mid-19th century with Anna Russell, the Duchess of Bedford and one of Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting.

As with many things, what the royal court did, everyone soon did as well, and Afternoon Tea swept Britain with a fervor.

Victoria was very fond of this respite, as well as the simple cake that was served along with other assorted sweets, dainty bread and butter sandwiches, and, of course, pots of steaming-hot tea.

That cake, two layers of basic yellow cake sandwiching a layer of preserve, became known as the Victoria Sandwich.*



Modern interpretations of the cake include an additional layer of vanilla buttercream along with the preserves, but in the case of my cake, I wanted to add another afternoon tea staple to the mix—clotted cream. My Victoria Sandwich: Two layers of yellow cake with homemade Strawberry preserves and clotted cream.








*The cake is also know by the name Victoria Sponge when the layers themselves are traditional sponge cake.

Cake Thursday: February 12th

The invitation:



(click on image to enlarge)

The Cake:



The stencil that I used for powdered-sugar-decoration was a quick design that did on the computer, then printed up and cut out.




Though the lemon mousse (homemade lemon curd mixed with whipped cream) isn't part of the original recipe, I wanted to break away from the usual cakes coming out of my kitchen as of late.





This is undoubtedly one of my favorite cakes I've baked thus far.

It tastes wonderful, has great texture, and is not too sweet. I always tend to love lemon and almond together, and the airiness of the mousse was a nice contrast to the sand-sized denseness of the finely-ground almonds. (Side note, if you've never blanched your own almonds before, I highly recommend it—easy and rather meditative!)



There are many (mostly identical) recipes for the cake online, but the one that I chose to go with can be found here.

Cake Thursday: November 6th

PS: I cheated and used the updated recipe for this cake in Greg Patents wonderful book, Baking in America