Recipe: Victoria Sponge with Coconut Cream

Victoria Sponge with Coconut Cream

This is a basic Victoria sponge recipe. I used coconut cream for the filling. It was the first time I have used it and I was delighted with the result. The coconut flavour isn’t at all overpowering and it makes a good substitute for a dairy cream and whips very well. The recipe is dairy free and nut free (apart from coconut which is classified as a fruit rather than a nut).

You will need:

• 200g self raising flour
• 200g dairy free margarine (I used Pure Olive Oil. Stork in gold packet is fine too.)
• 200g Caster Sugar
• 1 teasp baking powder
• 4 medium eggs
• 2 tblsp soya/oat/rice/almond milk.

For the filling:

• 1 can of coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 1 teasp. vanilla extract.
• Strawberry jam

Steps:

Plan this the day before as the coconut milk must go into the fridge overnight. Put it into the fridge in it’s original tin or container.

1. Grease 2 x 8inch (20cm) cake tins. Line the base with baking paper.
2. Preheat the oven to 170C / 160C Fan / Gas Mark 5.
3. Cut margarine into cubes and cream together with sugar until light and fluffy. Sieve flour and baking powder into a separate bowl.
4. Beat eggs and gradually add them to sugar and margarine, alternating with adding the flour and mixing all the time. Mix in milk and pour mixture into the tins with roughly the same amount in each.
5. Bake the cakes in the centre shelf for 20 minutes. Test by pressing down on top, if it bounces back it’s done. You can also test by putting a skewer into centre of cake, if it comes out clean it’s ready.
6. Cool on a wire tray.
7. Open the coconut milk carefully and spoon out all the cream into a bowl. Keep the coconut water aside you can use it for a smoothie or drink as is.  Add in two dessert spoons of caster sugar and the vanilla extract and whip for about 5 minutes.
8. Spread strawberry jam on one layer of the cake and then cover with the coconut cream. Smooth over with a palette knife or a spatula. Pop on the top layer of the cake and sprinkle with icing sugar. (As you can see from my photo I used caster sugar instead as I was out of icing sugar, this tasted fine but the icing sugar would look much better).