Victoria Sponge Cake – Stories

Last year, I made my mum this Lemon Curd Cake with White Chocolate Swiss Buttercream, and it was a huge hit with everyone who tried it. Except one person. But it turned out that that person hates lemon curd.

And raspberries.

Yeah… I don't get how that's possible either.

Some people are just… strange.

This year, I decided to make something a lot simpler. I liked the idea of a lighter cake, as my mum was literally arriving the night before her birthday (and was going to be attending a wedding on her birthday). I didn't want an overly rich, heavy, multi-million-component, cake slowing her down.

My mother has always told me how she loves strawberries, and she often recalls that the first time I walked as a baby was for a strawberry. True story. We were visiting Los Angeles, and staying at The Hyatt. I was eleven months old. My father had ordered strawberries and cream from room service. And we had received these gigantic, delicious red strawberries. As the story goes, I saw the strawberries from across the room, and stood up and began walking towards them. Sure, I stumbled. I fell. But eventually…I got me a strawberry!

At which point my parents, imagine their excitement, began running from one side of the room to the other with the strawberries to make me walk again!

Once I decided on making a strawberry-based dessert, I narrowed my options down to two recipes that I had been meaning to work on. The first was an Eton Mess (which is a dessert that really should have featured more in my childhood given that I went to a British Prep school, and then a Boarding School in England); and the second, was this Victoria Sponge Cake with Balsamic Strawberries - it's a recipe combination that's been on my mind for over a year, but I've just never had the opportunity to put it all together.

Don't worry bestie, the Eton Mess recipe will show up on my blog sooner or later too. But till then, check out this recipe for one of the most delicious chocolate cakes you've ever tried (it even has a whipped cocoa buttercream).