Good Morning lovely Baking people. I have a Victoria Sandwich query.

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Hello :)

I was wondering what you would consider a "light and airy" cake?

And secondly, do you have any top tips for achieving this? I follow the Mary Berry recipe to the letter and although it always goes down a treat, I worry. Thank you all!

don't "weigh" the ingredients...choose your eggs and use balance scales, eggs on one side and equal amounts of sugar, fat, sr flour.

I also have noticed a vast improvement in texture and height of sponge since converting to Stork

and keep the oven on the low side....and watch like a hawk for the last five mins....it really makes all the difference to get it out of the oven as soon as it bounces.

..bounce means a small finger dip into the centre of the cake springs straight back up. If it is slightly over done there is no bounce.

Ooh. Thank you!

Yup. What Cats said.

Weigh eggs.

Flora buttery.

Creaming method.

Conventional oven.

When checking the cake, listen to it as well as touch it - if its "popping" it isn't done yet. If the top looks done and its still popping, turn the oven down a little and give it 5 more mins

mmmmmmmm cake

I do Nigella's recipe-never fails. 8oz everything, 4 eggs, baking powder.

Also wrap a wet tea towel round the outside of the tin-this will make it rise evenly with no pointy top.

Yum, might make one today with DS! :)

Ok so say 4 eggs weigh 200g, would that be 200g of butter, sugar & sr flour? What about baking powder?

Yy 200g.

Don't need baking powder if you use the creaming method.

So with the equal quantities method how long in the oven? 20-25 minutes at around 170 degrees?

I do mine at 160 conventional for about 30 mins. I like a slow gentle heat so you don't get a pointy top.

Ooh. Good idea. to all of you :))

a question I should know the answer to; when you weigh the eggs is it in their shells or broken into a bowl?

What's the creaming method?

Weigh eggs in shells.

Cream fat and sugar together with strong arm or electric whisk until they become light and creamy. Slowly add in beaten eggs. Fold in sifted SR flour. Done.

Ooh wem that's a point.

Different I believe it is when you combine the sugar and butter separately. Then when they're nicely combined, add the rest of the ingredients.

Ok, so know I'm being majorly cheeky here but could anyone please give a vague outline of what I've got to do & when?

Ooh slubber you're my idol.

Thank you! The chemist in me didn't like the idea of being so specific as to weigh the eggs, but then not taking account of the shells, but I guess they're a fairly minimal percentage of the whole weight :)

Oh, I do the creaming method already. But my cakes still come not very high at all

Agree that stork gives lighter cakes than butter. But the taste of butter is so much better so I am prepared to lose a bit of lift to the cause of deliciousness.

The other thing that I think (that's not been mentioned above), is aim to get your cakes in the oven as soon as the flour is mixed in - as the active ingredient in either SR flour, or the baking powder starts working as soon as it gets damp* (and more so with heat). So, have your tins prepped and your oven preheated before you mix in flour, then straight in oven.

• typing this, am aware that it may not be TruScience, but this honestly 'works' for me.

Oooh, I'm liking the tip about a pointy top - does the wet teatowel really stop it? I make a nice sponge (which has improved by using Stork) but need DD3's birthday cake to be flat on top as I have a Gruffalo rice paper cake topper to go on it, which will look a little odd with a hill in the middle

I go with Mary Berry's all in one recipe, personally. You need to make sure the butter is really soft, though. It seems to rise fairly evenly, but really the answer if you have a flat cake topper is to turn the cake inside out - so trim the tops of each cake to be roughly flat, and then sandwich the two tops together with generous jam & buttercream so that the top and bottom of the finished sandwich are the bottoms of the cakes (and therefore perfectly flat).

HazeltheMcWitch It is TruScience :o

Baking powder contains Bicarbonate of Soda. The bicarb reacts with water and produces carbon dioxide gas, this creates bubbles of gas which makes the cake mixture rise. The reaction does happen faster with heat, but it will start as soon as the bicarb and water meet.

So yes, if you mix in the SR flour or bicarb and then leave your mixture while you do sort out cake tins, the bicarb will start reacting and producing CO2. When you pour the poor, neglected and ignored cake mixture into the tins it will burst some of the bubbles so there are fewer to raise the cake.

Turning the cakes upside down! Genius! Wht didn't I think of that?

Honestly, that is such a simple elegant solution - I am such a dunce!

Ooh, StainlessSteelCat - ta for 'the science bit' !
I thought that was the case, and could explain why it were true ref heat, but could not do same for moisture, and I chickened out on reading Wem 's comment about the chemist in her, so added the disclaimer lest I be told that actually it was BadScicence!

Hazel The chemist in me faded away a long time ago, just left little niggles about weighing stuff properly. I read your post and thought, yeah, that sounds about right, but didn't dare try to confirm it or explain it, just in case someone who actually understands it came along. Luckily they did :)

That (the cake mixture waiting around bit) is the main problem I have with my cake pop maker - the mixture has to wait around (otherwise you would be making stupidly small batches) for, at worst, about 20 mins - so inevitably the last batch of cake pops are less "puffy" than the first lot (you can cheat and just put a little bit more mixture in as you go through the batches though..)