Victoria Sponge Cake Recipe (2024)

it's a cake. you need the sugar to provide structure, and only 1 TBL isn't enough to do that, and also will result in a bread-like flavor.
We have an obesity epidemic, NOT because of home baking, but because of Fast Food, Big Food, and Frankenfood.

No no, this is a misunderstanding. You could have a piece of homemade cake every day and not become obese. Take the sugar out of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Eliminate nonfoods and those with inflammatory side effects (hyrdogenated oils). Run around outside every day. And enjoy a normal portion of your lovely homemade treats with your family. No problem.

You've reminded me of a line from the show, The Good Place, "There’s something so human about taking something great and ruining it a little so you can have more of it." What's the point of eating lousy cake, Nelly? Eat the good one, just don't eat all of it.

These are the quantities for a 7 inch cake. An 8 inch cake needs 4 large eggs and 225g each of butter, sugar and flour (and no milk needed). Mary Berry says so, and so do I - I am English and have made these cakes for many parish cake sales.

Hello Nelly,
A perfect cake is a joy to behold. You may decrease the fat and sugar and egg, but what you end up with is a less tender result with less structure than necessary to hold all the lovely fillings. When it comes to desserts, a GOOD Cake is not for the faint-hearted! One beautiful piece will suffice. I believe the reason we have an obesity epidemic, is that we Americans can't stop at just one perfect slice. I would rather have one delicious dessert than seven mediocre ones. Joy!

For 9-inch cake pans:15 tbsps/215g unsalted butter (1 ⅞ sticks), softened1 ⅔ cups/210g all-purpose flour4 ⅛ tsps baking powder⅔ tsp kosher salt1 cup/220g granulated sugar4 large eggs, at room temperature2 ½ tbsps whole milk⅔ cup/152ml raspberry jam, more to taste1 ¼ cup/303 ml heavy cream1 tbsp + 1 tsp confectioners’ sugar, plus more for dusting⅓ tsp vanilla extract (or just make it ½)

No. It's cake. It's not supposed to be healthy. Don't eat it every day.

I bought a beautiful cake cookbook, featuring cakes from all over the world by Roger Pizey and followed a slightly different recipe for the Victoria Sponge from his book. It is a lovely cake - light and simple and Pizey says that Queen Victoria was said to have enjoyed it with her afternoon tea. I invited a friend over and we enjoyed it in my garden on a warm afternoon with iced tea. I brought a piece to my 93 year old mother, who has now passed but loved it. Cakes bring meaning to life.

Eat a small piece and relax. I believe it was Julia Child who said, "A party without a cake is just a meeting." My daughter makes this; I love it.

I recently spent a year in Portsmouth, England. My grandson, Jack and I had Victoria's Sponge Cake at (too) many tea rooms all over the UK. We claimed we were taste testing for scientific purposes, but honestly, we did it because we love it. We never saw whipped cream on any of them. Victoria's Sponge Cake was always made with a layer of raspberry jam and a layer of butter cream frosting. It's truly exceptional that way.

A variation from Jamie Oliver is to add fresh berries between the jam layer & the whipped cream layer. I used seedless raspberry jam and fresh raspberries in concentric circles which made a pretty pattern on the edge with cream and raspberries alternating. It was delicious and soft and light.

I have made this a dozen times, but there are a few changes needed.Preheat oven to 325 (not 350 degrees).Add 1 tablespoon almond extract to batter. The flavor is amazing.Add 1/4 cup milk (not 2 tbs). The batter needs to be a bit "looser" or it just does not rise properly. Cook for 20 minutes and then test with a toothpick (believe me, this cake will dry out super-fast, so better to cook a little more if needed).Otherwise, it's marvelous.

True Brit here. My mother always made it with whipped cream. As did I.

It's a cake! A special treat! Not to be eaten everyday. And you are cooking it. It's not the reason there's an obesity problem. Soft drinks, processed foods of any kind, fast foods–these are the problem, not someone baking a Victoria sponge cake in there kitchen.

Was inspired to make this after watching far too much BBO and The Crown. Very easy recipe, but it did not yield anywhere near enough batter for two cakes. I made one in a mine inch pan and cut it in half.I used strawberry jam because the store had every bonne maman except raspberry. I realize what I made wasn’t a true Victoria sponge, but it was a sweet and simple treat to serve company.

In my first attempt, I made the mistake of setting my oven to “convect bake”. It reduced the temperature accordingly, from 350 to 325. However, the convection fans attempted to hurry a cake along that simply will not tolerate being rushed. The result was a pale yellow stodgy bake, sunken in the middle, sullen and dispirited. Lesson learned. I kept the convection system off in my second attempt, and allowed the cake to take its time basking at 350 degrees. The cakes were golden, noble.

Over 3 teaspoons of baking powder? Thats all we can taste besides the sugar. Not happy with this cake at all.

As others have noted, the layers, as pictured, are way thicker than what you end up with when you use two 8 inch pans. It annoys me when food stylists do this type of thing. You definitely need to either double the recipe or at least add an additional half a recipe. That might be a longer bake time which would result in those nice brown edges, which I also didn’t get with my bake time.

I made this tonight before reading these comments and thought it turned out lovely. I used 9 inch pans because that’s what I had, and the layers cooked in about 18 minutes. They’re thin but not flat or dense and have a nice texture. And I couldn’t taste baking powder at all. Maybe a lot of folks are using old baking powder? Or are being influenced by the power of suggestion?

This is the first time a NYT recipe has steered me wrong.As written, this cake will be bitter. Over 3 tsp baking soda for 1.3c flour is far too much.(Trust me on this. I made the recipe as written. It was beautiful but bitter.)

I baked this in one layer in a 9-inch springform pan and it came out perfectly; I just spread jam and cream on top. It wasn’t very thick: If I wanted to layer it, I would double the recipe.

Agree that the proportion of flour to baking powder is way off, and I suspect a typo in the amount of flour. The general rule is 1 c flour:1 Tsp baking powder.

Tastes good but not nearly enough batter for 2 8-inch pans. Resulted in very thin cake layers.

My layers came out to be about 1” thin and dry as a bone. I bake cakes all the time. Some are saying you should cream the butter /sugar for 10 minutes and maybe my butter was a little cold although it seemed room temperature for creaming. Batter was super dense, not light at all, after adding the flour.

So happy to find this recipe in time for coronation watching, though we’ll probably have polished it off by then. . I used a good strawberry jam because that’s what I had on hand. Whipped cream offered separately, along with sliced strawberries. After reading about the stiffness of the batter I used extra large eggs instead of the large ones called for. As Mary Berry might have said, they worked a treat!

Excellent. Was really deceived at the amount of batter it makes but the cakes don't need to be huge and they end up rising perfectly in the oven. It wasn't overly sweet and the whipped cream was a welcomed addition

I thought this was suppose to be made with either a fatless sponge cake or a genoise.

Oh mine tasted like baking powder and the sponge was too hard. What did I do wrong?

Disclaimer: I have not tried this recipe. But I did just make Bon Apetit* recipe for Victoria Sponge. There is half as much butter in theirs, and their recipe starts with beating the eggs and sugar until fluffy, then adding heated milk with butter melted in it. This resulted in a very thin batter which rose beautifully and was incredibly light, fluffy, and delicious. I’m curious how these 2 recipes vary. I plan to make this one to compare.