Half Cakes?

When I first heard of these I really did think, has the world gone mad? Half Birthday cakes.  As if you aren't lucky enough to get one day of cake, presents and celebration a year, apparently some kids get two! After some research I then realised these are generally baked for a child turning 6 months old and it made a bit more sense. Personally, I think it takes the spotlight away from the first birthday a bit and don't really see the point, but each to their own. Anyway, enough chat about half birthdays and let's talk cake (that's what we're all here for right?). This is the inspiration of this week’s cake, or should I say cakes? 

Both of my grandparents have flown over from France after over 2 years of not seeing them due to the pandemic, so it really was a cause for celebration. Also, unfortunately for my Grandad (who has a sweet tooth like myself), my Nanny is not a fan of baking and will very rarely get out the mixing bowl. So, it was tricky to decide what I should bake, as he was only here for a week, and thanks to my lovely mother he was expecting baked goods! 

I didn’t want to risk not meeting expectations which is what lead me to stick with baking a cake, as apart from Nanny, who doesn’t love cake? But this then started me thinking about which would be the best flavour to go for. Some of the older generation may prefer carrot cake or coffee cake, but personally I am a chocaholic myself, so I was really leaning towards going for chocolate. But then there is the old faithful Victoria sponge, which you really can’t go wrong with and is both my eldest brother and mum’s favourite. I was in a bit of a dilemma between chocolate and Victoria sponge having decided that going for a coffee cake or carrot cake would be a riskier option as I’ve much less experience baking those flavours and wouldn’t have time for a redo if the cake went wrong. Although I am writing a blog on baking, I must be honest, these are generally going to be as the name of my blog suggests, more simple bakes. I am not a fancy experienced baker, I just enjoy it as a hobby, and more-so, really love eating cake. But back to picking which flavour. Here is where the half cake comes into play, why pick one when we could have the best of both worlds? 

Now I’m not a religious person myself, but there is one bible I read on the regular. 

This week the recipe is coming from none other than the Queen of cakes, Mary Berry herself. “Mary Berry is one of the best-known and respected cookery writers and broadcasters in the UK.” (BBC, n.d.) But I imagine most of you reading this will know her from when she judged The Great British Bake Off, which unfortunately ceased after the BBC lost the series to their rival network Channel 4, and out of loyalty to the BBC Mary Berry quit. So… if we turn to page 40 of the baking bible, in Chapter one, “Classic Cakes” we find the recipe for a Large All-in-one Victoria Sandwich. But because I have decided to bake two different flavours of cake, I will be doing things slightly differently. Therefore, we will also be using the recipe for Chocolate Victoria Sandwich to bake this cake which can be found on page 43. 

To start with, for the cake mixtures we will need the following ingredients:

• 225g softened butter

• 225g caster sugar

• 4 large eggs

• 225g self-raising flour

• 2 level teaspoons baking powder

• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder

• 3 tablespoons boiling water

Now for the recipe, this will mainly be based on Mary Berry’s instructions except for a few of my personal tips. Before we start pleased measure the weight of your mixing bowl, this will all make sense later! 

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC/Fan 160ºC/Gas 4. Grease two 20cm (8in) sandwich tins then line the base of each tin with baking parchment. Personally, I use baking parchment liner paper circles from Lakeland (which I will link in the reference list). Take some unsalted butter and pop a bit at the bottom of each cake tin so that the baking paper circle doesn’t move about, then grab some kitchen roll and dab it in the butter, then rub round the edges of the tin until you have a nice thin layer of butter.

2. Measure the butter first, if you haven’t left it out to soften then be sure to pop it in the microwave for 20 secs to make the mixing process a lot easier! Then measure the sugar and mix until thoroughly combined. 

3. Time to add the eggs! I recommend cracking these into a mug or bowl first, so you aren’t accidentally adding any shell directly to your mixture. Mix!

4. Now after measuring the flour and baking powder be sure to sieve it into your mixture to avoid any lumps. 

5. Now is when I like to add a couple tablespoons of milk (usually whole milk), I find this really results in a much moister sponge.

Here is when things get more complicated compared to Mary’s recipe, and hopefully you didn’t ignore my previous step of measuring your mixing bowl. Now measure the mixture again (assuming it is still in the same bowl), be sure to not have your spoon or stirring device in the bowl. (This added a lot of unnecessary confusion when I went to do this step.) Add half of your mixture to one of your baking tins, then leave to the side. 

6. Blend the cocoa and water in a mixing bowl then leave to cool slightly. Then beat in until thoroughly blended. At this step I realised I had no cocoa powder, only hot chocolate powder. I tasted my mixture after stirring it in and it wasn’t chocolatey enough for me, I ended up tripling the amount of hot chocolate & water mixture in the end. I recommend you just flavour it to taste as I’m not sure how much of a difference it would’ve made if I had used cocoa. 

7. Pour the chocolate cake mixture into your other baking tin. Be sure to use a spatula to get all the mixture! 

8. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes or until well risen and the tops of the cakes spring back when lightly pressed with a finger. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes then turn out, peel off the parchment and finish cooling on a wire rack. 

While the cakes are cooling it is time to make the icings and filling for both cakes. I decided to not use any buttercream for either cakes against the recipes recommendation. My mum is not a fan of buttercream and I’m just not a fan of making it to be honest. This lead me to attempting to make chocolate ganache to fill and ice the chocolate half cake with. 

It turns out chocolate ganache is much easier to make than I thought, first of all you only need two ingredients, cream and chocolate. I used Callebaut dark chocolate chips which can be bought off amazon, but you will not find these in your local shop. When picking a chocolate, you can’t use normal eating chocolate as this will not melt properly to make a ganache, so be sure to use semi-sweet baking chocolate bar. Cream wise, I went for double cream. It is a 1:1 ratio of chocolate to cream for chocolate ganache. 

1. Start by measuring both the cream and chocolate, do not combine. 

2. Leave the chocolate to the side in a heat proof bowl.

3. Add the cream to a small saucepan. 

4. Heat the cream on the hob until it just starts to bubble, be sure to take it off the heat before it boils. 

5. Then pour the hot cream over the chocolate and leave for 5 minutes.

6. Stir until well combined.

At this point I gave my chocolate ganache a taste and found it was rather bitter. You may have noticed I taste throughout the baking process, partly because I love cake batter and because I want to make sure it will taste good once in the end! Therefore, I added some icing sugar until it was a bit sweeter to taste.

7. Put the chocolate ganache mixture into the fridge for 1 hour.

Whilst the chocolate ganache is in the fridge it is now time to make the icing for the Victoria sponge and the filling. I have decided to fill my Victoria sponge with strawberry jam and whipped double cream. For the icing you will need ½ pint of double cream and icing sugar. I have linked the recipe I used in my reference list, but I will explain how I went about making it. I ran out of vanilla extract so made my icing slightly differently. 

1. Beat the cream until frothy.

2. Add the icing sugar gradually whilst beating. 

3. Taste the icing throughout and keep adding icing sugar until it is at a desired sweetness. Be sure to not double dip and use a clean utensil when doing this, especially if you’re sharing your cake with others!

4. Whip until light and a thick enough consistency to spread as an icing. 

Finally, it is time to bring everything together. Take the chocolate ganache out of the fridge and give it a light beating. Make sure it is a thick spreadable consistency. If it isn’t… then I’m sorry but I can’t help you. Looks like google is going to be your friend! I wasn’t lying when I said I wasn’t an experienced baker. But don’t worry if you have followed the recipe, I am sure everything will be fine and dandy! 

I started with assembling my Victoria sponge cake.

1. Take your perfect circle and slice it down the middle with a sharp knife. I did this just by eye but if you aren’t good at guesstimating you might want to grab a ruler for this step. 

2. Spread a good layer of strawberry jam on one of the halves. 

3. Get your whipped double cream from earlier and spread it evenly on top of the strawberry jam. 

4. Very carefully place the other half of sponge cake on top of the fresh cream and jam filling. 

5. Ice the half cake with the whipped cream frosting evenly. For this step you can spread with a knife or go all out and pipe it on if you so desire. In my case it was now 9pm and I didn’t fancy any piping malarky, So I roughly spread a good layer on top of the half cake. I prefer a more rough finish when I’m not piping as otherwise it is very hard to get a completely smooth finish.

Now time for the main event – the chocolate cake!

1. Do the same as you did the Victoria sponge and divide your layer of chocolate cake evenly down the middle.

2. Add a thick even layer of chocolate ganache to one of the halves of chocolate sponge.

3. Place the other half on top of the layer with chocolate ganache on. 

4. Ice the chocolate half cake with a thick layer of ganache all over, similarly to how we did with the Victoria sponge and whipped cream frosting. 

Finally for a nice touch I bought white and milk chocolate hearts from the baking aisle of Tesco. I added the white chocolate hearts to my Victoria sponge and the milk chocolate to my chocolate cake in the same design on both. This is an optional step if you’d like the cakes to look a bit prettier! 

Reference List

BBC (n.d.) Mary Berry. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/chefs/mary_berry [Accessed 18th October 2021]

Mitchell, R (2016) Mary Berry to Quit as Judge of ‘Great British Bake Off’, Paul Hollywood to Stay. Available from: https://variety.com/2016/tv/global/mary-berry-to-quit-as-judge-of-great-british-bake-off-1201867940/ [Accessed 18th October 2021]

https://www.lakeland.co.uk/5522/100-Baking-Parchment-Liner-Paper-Circles-20cm

Food. (n.d.) Whipped Cream Frosting. Available from: https://www.food.com/recipe/whipped-cream-frosting-39013 [Accessed 18th October 2021]