Vanilla sponge cake

I'm still catching up on blogging about the baking that I've done over the past couple of weeks, but I'm getting round to it! This is going to be a short post as there's not really a huge amount to say about it. I made a vanilla sponge cake for my other half's cricket match, using the Hummingbird bakery's Cake Days vanilla cupcake recipe. A note on the recipe advised doubling it to make a three tier cake, but thinking that three tiers would be a bit much, I decided to stick to the quantities given for cupcakes. It turned out that this was a very good decision as the cake was the perfect height (this was using two 20cm cake tins).

I adapted the recipe slightly as I used vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract - having procured some recently, I wanted to see how much difference it would make.

The answer is that it makes quite a lot of difference. The sponge had a much fuller vanilla flavour. Added to that was vanilla buttercream icing, again made using the vanilla bean paste. That was all topped off with strawberry jam and the result was a lovely, moist, light sponge with lots of flavour. I have to admit that vanilla sponge is not really my thing, nor is buttercream, and I wouldn't have chosen it for myself, but the combination of flavours did work very well.

If you want a simple but impressive cake, this one certainly fits the bill. It is a little sweet, but for those who like their cake that way this is sure to go down a treat! It looks a little plain on top, but I'm always stuck for what to do with vanilla sponge cakes. Any suggestions welcome!