Victoria Sponge

Big Miss has started showing an interest in cooking. Last week she helped me cook a Goa Lamb Vindaloo curry (from 50 Great Curries of India by Camellia Panjabi) for myself and the Missus. But this week it is my turn to help her. I was given my orders for ingredients on the weekly shopping list - strawberry jam and 500ml of double cream, and yesterday afternoon we made a Victoria Sponge. Now I do quite a lot of cooking (a lot of it just for myself at "The Barn"), but I have never made a cake before.

"But that's not caster sugar" I said as she was mixing the first layer. She was using ordinary granulated sugar. "We haven't got any, but Mum said it was just the same". Hmm. The mixture looked a bit thick to me. So we tried some fine soft brown sugar for the second half, while the first half was cooking (we only have 1 cake tin). Then I looked at the use-by date on the self-raising flour - December 2006! (The Missus doesn't cook many cakes either). Hmm.

Well it turned out OK-ish, but had to be cooked for a bit longer than the recipe said. Here it is...

Just then, there was a knock on the door - a couple of her mates had come calling. So they got invited to taste it.

It went down pretty well, although it did have a slightly unusual crunchy texture!