Vanilli Sponge

Last night was the best night of my life. 

I discovered 'Britains Best Baker'. It combines all my passions; judging people, baking and reality television. Its amazing. Well, maybe it seemed more amazing at 4am when I was deliriously tired and unable to sleep.

I will watch the next episode during daylight hours and keep you updated.   

This week, I have spent a surprising amount of time out of my bed, owing mainly to the fact that this week has been full of good-byes. Today I said good-bye to one of my friends who is leaving the warm bosom of North London for 6 months to go travelling. In celebration we made lunch at my house, but not just any lunch. We made SUSHI. Not going to lie it didn't look like the professionals but it was SO tasty. In fact we almost didn't bother cutting up the pieces and were tempted to just eat the roll straight.

Back to the baking:

Seeing as this is only my second post I thought I would start with the basics and ya can't get much more basic than a simple vanilli sponge.

That's right, VANILLI not vanilla. Vanilli is just so much more fun to say, try it - va-nil-ee. 

This is the best vanilla sponge recipe I have ever made, and I have made A LOT of cakes.

1 cup (123g) plain flour

1 cup (123g) granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1/4 cup (57g) butter

Vanilla icing, I use vanilla butter-cream icing

1.Start as usual by creaming the butter and the sugar on high. 

 2. Add the egg slowly while the mixer is on high.

 3. Beat the egg in.

 4. I realize it looks a bit like off cottage cheese, but its about to get a whole lot worse.
Now we add the milk.

 5. Adding the milk slowly is the key. Fun fact, holding a camera and pouring milk is not a good idea.

6. It may curdle, fear not, mine did too. But that's a good thing because I can show you how to fix it. Try to avoid spilling your tears in the curdled mixture, turn the mixer on high and beat the livin day lights outta it.

7. Have faith, keep mixing, and eventually, voila! Smooth as a baby's bottom.

8. Split the mixture evenly between two cake tins. Don't forget to grease them or all your hard work will result in a mushy crumby mess.  Smooth out the top for an even bake.

9. Bake for 30 minutes, it should look golden and have a stable structure.

10. Now cutting your cake to level it is always sad because I always feel bad for the poor lonely cake scrap, so I feel I must give them a warm, safe home in mah belleh.
To level the cake place a dish cloth over the cake when it comes straight out of the oven and push down the center using your palm.
Please excuse the tatty nails by the way

11. Let the cakes cool for an hour and then turn them out of the cake tin. Sad little cake number one got stuck to the base of my cake tin but it came out level. YAY

Now, my second cake died a little bit. The entire bottom stuck to the cake tin AND the cake broke in half. The result was an uneven, crumby mess. Disaster? I think not...

12. See magical butter cream frosting covers all. Don't worry about making it look neat and pretty, this is just the filling. Usually I put a layer of jam on top of the butter cream but my sister ate all the jam so, no jam for cake.

13. Now cover up the ugly cake with the pretty cake like sew:

14. Crumb coat the cake, and refrigerate. 
Crumb coating is covering the cake in a thin layer of icing to lock all the crumbs into place and stop them appearing in the outer layer of icing, keeping it from looking 'dirty' 

15. Cover the cake in a second layer of butter-cream icing and then go crazy. We only had blue food dye at home so my options were fairly limited. I started by piping a base decoration and then lining the top of the cake with the same star shaped decorating tip.  

16. I probably should have stopped decorating here but I was bored so I went a little crazy. I mean like 6 year old art project crazy. I know that the piping is a little wonky, I got distracted by the sudden burst of sunshine outside. But it was still DAM TASTY.

The best thing about this cake was that it stayed moist for three whole days covered only by an over-sized salad bowl.  

mmmmm Yummeh