I have to admit that I had never before attempted to make a traditional Victoria sponge cake in gluten-free form. Gluten-free baking tends to be pretty heavy. This is because gluten in wheat flour is the the protein which gives any sort of dough its stretchy texture - ideal for stretching around bubbles of air for lovely light sponges or bread. This tends to mean that you have to add other stuff to try to recreate this elasticity, often without much success. Gluten-free flour is also very water absorbent and so the results can be dry and crumbly. However, the chef in Finland had made a fabulous gluten-free sponge cake so I just had to give it a go!
My cake tins are fairly large (20cm diameter and 4cm deep) so I ended up making a '3-egg-sponge'. I began by weighing my chosen three eggs (223g) and used this weight as the basis of the rest of the ingredients.
I used an electric hand whisk to beat 223g Stork margarine 'for cakes' (lighter than butter so helps to produce a lighter sponge, and recommended when using gluten-free flour) with 223g caster sugar until I had a light, creamy texture. I then beat in the three eggs and a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste. I then added 223g gluten-free self-raising flour, 1 and a half teaspoons of gluten-free baking powder, half a teaspoon of xanthan gum (helps with the elasticity) and five tablespoons of milk (helps with the dryness) to the mixture and gently but thoroughly folded it in. The mixture looked quite sloppy and almost curdled at this stage but I ploughed on by dividing the mixture between the two lined cake tins, carefully levelled out the mixture and popped them into the oven, preheated to 170C fan / 190C ordinary oven / gas mark 5. I tested them after 20 minutes to see if a skewer inserted into the centre came out clean but ended up leaving them for a further 5 minutes.
Once out of the oven I cooled them on a wire rack and well away from any four-legged furry friends (lesson learnt from a previous disastrous experience - well, disastrous for me, but the cat was very happy indeed!)
When it came to the assembly, I whipped 300ml double cream until the 'soft peaks' stage. Put about a third of it into a piping bag before mixing a very generous amount of blueberries (at a guess about 250-300g) into what remained in the bowl. I decided to use frozen (defrosted) blueberries for this bit as I was keen for some of the juice to seep out into the cream to make it a bit pink and also slightly more juicy. I heaped this over the top of one of the cakes before putting the other cake on top.
I then took about 2 tablespoons of salted caramel sauce (from a jar), slackened it off by adding a dash of boiling water until it was a spreadable consistency, and covered the top of the cake with a thin layer, leaving a 3cm caramel-free ring around the outside of the cake. Onto this I piped the remaining cream and topped each 'blob' with a fresh blueberry.
The result proved very popular and I'm not sure you could tell it was gluten-free - but not having eaten a similar cake that contained gluten for at least 17 years who am I to judge! However, I think this sponge recipe could become a new favourite.
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