Victoria sponge (yellow cake)

There are so many yellow cake recipes out there, but I've found many of them to be disappointing and kinda wasteful for what you get. EIGHT egg yolks?? Are you joking with that? Maybe if I had some angel food cake to make right after and needed the egg yolks, but man! I'd already sacrificed six egg yolks to the custard and I didn't feel right using only half of eight more eggs.

I searched high and low for a good yellow cake recipe and guess what? The Brits are lousy with them! But you wouldn't know it, because the crafty devils call it "Victoria Sponge." Hmph. Even worse, they don't slather it with chocolate buttercream like any DECENT American will normally do. They eat their cake with jam. JAM, I TELL YOU.

Ok, fine. That sounds perfectly delightful. I'm just worked up because I feel like they put one over on me with the "sponge" misnomer. To get my recipe, I turned to Nigella Lawson, who is my second favorite cookbook/TV chef. Her book, Feast: Food to Celebrate Life, has the best chocolate cake recipes. I've made almost every one of them as birthday cakes for other people and they've loved them. My favorite has been the honey chocolate cake.

For the Victoria sponge (or, yellow cake, as we Yanks call it) I pulled a recipe from Nigella's How to Eat. It's so, so easy. You just blitz everything in a food processor and it turns out a truly delicious batter. If you don't have a processor, no worries! It's easy using a standard mixer too.

Victoria sponge cake (yellow cake)
(makes 2 8-inch layers)
from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease two 8-inch cake pans with plenty of butter. I might even dust the pan with a little flour too, just for extra insurance.

In the bowl of a food processor, place 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup cornstarch, 1 cup + 2 tbsp sugar, 2 sticks (1 cup) softened unsalted butter, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (or vanilla bean paste, which is what I used), and 4 eggs. Process the mixture until you have a delicious, kinda thick batter. Pour 2-3 tbsp milk in the batter and process it until it thins out just a bit. Nigella says that you'll batter of a "soft, dropping consistency." Which, is less and less appetizing, the more I think about it.

**If you use your mixer, stir together the flour, cornstarch, and baking powder in a small bowl. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until it's pale and creamy. Add the vanilla extract and then add the eggs one at a time, beating them into the batter thoroughly after each egg is added. Pour the dry ingredients in and beat it in at a low speed. I usually add the flour in thirds, so I don't get a ton of flour in my face when I turn the mixer on. Beat in the milk.**

Pour the batter into your prepared pans and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake. Take the cake out of the oven and let it sit on the counter in the pans for a few minutes, then flip the layers onto a rack (or plate) to let it finish cooling.