A Mothers’ Day Victoria Sponge, Against the Odds – Introducing 'The Victory Sponge!’

This mother’s day I decided I’d try and do something a little different, whilst challenging myself in the process. I decided to try baking. After all every Mum loves a cake, and good Mums like anything that their kids do, no matter how badly they do it. Luckily, I’m blessed with a great mum, with fantastic patience despite having been tormented for 23 years with shitey crayon drawings and bad jokes. Surely, she’d love a cake to celebrate the completely non-corporate festivities of Mothers’ day - no matter how woefully un-cake-like it could turn out?

So it was decided. I shall bake! And that is what I did.

The only real problem was, I’ve never really baked, well not solo anyway.  I think my lack of baking to date is down to the fact that I’m quite choosey when it comes to the cakes I like. I have a pretty rigid idea of what I think constitutes a cake. Also there are a number of luscious cakey varieties I just don’t think I could stomach, let alone bake. For these reason I decided to avoid the mothers’ day cliché of chocolate, and bake a Victoria Sponge - but give it a unique and personal twist. This cake I would later dub, the Victory Sponge! A cake baked against the odds.

The Recipe:

I actually stayed fairly loyal to the Victoria Sponge recipe I sourced on the Big British Castle website which you can find by clicking here. Well, I say I stayed loyal, loyal in the first instance anyway… excluding cock-ups. I followed the recipe and directions to bake the sponge element of the cake, then I went off road. I guess this makes me some sort of a cake maverick.

Instructions for Baking a Victory Sponge!

Put on the Atoms for Peace’s debut album ‘Amok’, loud.

Measure out the ingredients.

Add the margarine to sugar.

Add the Flour, the Eggs, and the vanilla extract to the sugary marge puddle you just made.

Stir, whisk, and beat the mixture until you get arm ache - because baking is strangely physical.

Go out for 3 hours…

Wait a minute. What?

Come back home after wandering around aimlessly until you remembered you’re actually supposed to be baking.

Re-pre-heat oven.

Dollop the mix into two cake tins. Cook for 28 minutes at 180 degrees because you can’t wait two minutes longer.

Place your awesome cake on a cooling rack, and marvel because you haven’t re-baked ‘Grey Cake’ - that tasteless cakey sensation you baked with your younger brother when you were 14.

Shut your laptop hiding BBC food, fasten your seatbelt, tighten your jam roll cage, and switch to 4x4 mode. It’s time to go off the rocky road.  << These are terrible cake jokes. But, I bet they’d be funny if I had said them in Greggs.

Cut the two cake bases in half – providing 4 layers of cake, not a simple sandwich cake like the BBC website wants you to have. You’re a rebel, f*ck instructions.

Consult your Mum because you’re not that much of a rebel, and you’ve got lost in the perils of the cakey outback after going off road without a map.

Bin the intended 4^th layer of cake because it doesn’t look to have cooked as well as the other 3 – you’ve still got a double sponge sandwich on your hands, so you’re also still a rebel. Pow! Take that Merry Berries.

Prepare fresh strawberries (which you lightly sugar), and blackberries that you hope are both tart and tangy.

Add clotted cream to the 2 bottom layers (because you want this to taste like a giant mega scone), and seedless jam to the underside of the 2 top layers.

Decorate and fill the bottom sandwich with strawberries, and the top sandwich with blackberries.

Place on a square plate even though the cake is circular because you’re edgy.

Pre-maturely tweet a picture of the cake because you’re super proud it looks like a cake and not an undercooked yet fruity pile of vom.

I baked this cake - super #proud of my first cake attempt! twitter.com/SirScottofMac/…
— Scott McLoughlin (@SirScottofMac) March 10, 2013

Feel your heart sink as a friend informs you it looks like a “Big Mac”.

Die on the inside when another chimes in asking “do you want fries with that?”

@rossmcgeown @sirscottofmac Do you want fries with that?
— Craig (@Craigloves) March 10, 2013

Feel renewed hope when you are informed you forgot to frost the cake.

Add the missing frosting, and once again ‘feel the biz’.

Serving the cake:

I went with a sideplate full of cake, with extra fruit and a pot of tea for good measure.

Oooh yeaaa. You’ve arrived at the taste party.

Did it taste good?

Well there wasn’t any left. So either it was unbelievably good, or my Mum once again proved she is a lovely lovely person, willing to eat cakey nonsense to see me smile.