Mini Victoria Sponges

In honour of National Cupcake Week - I'm pretty sure that's a real thing and if it's not, well it's just another excuse to make cakes - inspired by something I must have read earlier this week but I just. can't. remember. what?! I decided to make mini Victoria sponges.

They are an example of one of the reasons I love baking so much. Little effort but the results are visually impressive and they taste even better.

They're super easy to make so I didn't use a recipe, just a packet sponge mix. Don't judge me, I'm a firm believer that life is too short to spend hours honing that perfectly light and delicious vanilla sponge when it can be just as easily bought from the supermarket. I still added two eggs and water to it so I don't completely count it as cheating.

I used my full-proof fantastic silicon cupcake cases - I will never go back to paper cases now - and decanted the mix over 12 of them and baked them for about 15 minutes till the tops were golden and a knife came out clean.

After they cooled I cut them in half, spooned some strawberry jam and whipped double cream over the bottoms and sandwiched them back together. I sifted over a little icing sugar to finish them off.

N.B. If anyone is interested, I actually tried Elmlea's Double Light cream which can be treated the same as a regular double cream but is half the fat. I was a bit dubious as to whether it'd whip up in the same way and although it took maybe triple the time to do it (no more than 5 mins with an electric whisk), the result was exactly the same. I don't even know if I'd be able to tell the taste difference either and it's even the same price as the regular version.

To&From

I'm excited to tell you that I recently wrote a freelance shopping piece for US travel magazine To&From.

Click here to see the fabulous September/October issue.

Check me out on page 13, and my shopping piece on pages 20, 21 and 22.

I'm writing for them again for the next issue so I can't wait to show you that one!