The ultimate Victoria sponge cake recipe: prevent sinking and save afternoon tea with these 10 simple tips

I opened the oven door too soon.

My first sponge cake was irreparable. Sunken. Shameful.

There is a reason many Australian mums buy their birthday sponge from the supermarket and focus on decorating rather than baking.

Victoria sponge cake, AKA Victoria sandwich is much more forgiving than a typical Australian sponge. This traditional afternoon tea staple is simple in both execution and looks, but big on taste.

Short & sweet

Taste: Fluffy, sweet and moist vanilla joy with tart raspberries
Ease: Surprisingly simple with exact measurements
Pros: Much less finicky than individual cakes
Cons: Disguising a sunken cake because you opened the oven door too early…
Again: Definitely – this recipe is perfect for a traditional afternoon tea, but makes a great birthday cake, too!

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We’ve worked to make this Victoria sponge simple

The mixture looks great. It’s pale and creamy, drops perfectly from the spoon and the vanilla is both comforting and intoxicating. Tiny bubbles are just starting to form.

I confirm the oven temperature and slide the cakes into the oven, side by side, one on top and one on the bottom, or one at a time.

The cake starts to rise and looks perfect. Characteristic lumps start to appear on top and the cake is turning a wonderful golden colour. A heady vanilla permeates the house.

I resist the urge to open the oven and admire it’s beauty close up.

Around the 18-minute mark, things start to go wrong. Around the edge, the cake keeps rising. In the middle, it seems like someone took out a pin or a skewer and systematically started popping all the tiny bubbles of air in the cake. My mood sinks with the cake.

This recipe has been a trial. We’ve eaten a lot of failed Victoria sponge cakes. They still tasted great, but we had a real problem with them sinking in the middle.

Just when we thought we’d finally found a foolproof Victoria sponge cake recipe, we bake another one to double check and take photos, and have it fail again.

When I list what NOT to do, I am speaking from experience. I made every one of those mistakes, at least once.

So I googled and tried every suggestion I could find. The ones that worked, I share here.

And I’ll share some tricks I developed for camouflaging sunken Victoria sponge cakes. Because there were a lot…

What is a Victoria sponge cake?

Victoria sponge cake or Victoria sandwich is a British layer cake, made up of two buttery, vanilla sponge cake rounds sandwiched together with jam and whipped cream.

As you may have guessed, Victoria sponge was named after Queen Victoria.

In 1843, English food manufacturer Alfred Bird invented baking powder. The addition of this invention to the classic vanilla pound cake made it rise higher than was previously possible. The lighter and more golden cake became an afternoon tea favourite.

The word sponge was apparently used erroneously and it should in fact be called the Victoria sandwich cake.

How to present your Victoria sandwich cake

Queen Victoria enjoyed the cakes sandwiched together with jam for afternoon tea. Most modern versions use cream to sandwich, too.

Traditionally, raspberry jam would be used, but you can use any jam you like. We recommend strawberry and blackberry. We love adding to the taste by layering the jam and cream with some fresh berries, too.

The top of the cake is normally only decorated with a dusting of powdered sugar. Simple, but perfect.

When you’re serving this cake as part of a traditional afternoon tea (with your favourite traditional afternoon tea sandwiches and featherlight scones of course), serve it whole on a beautiful cake stand. Don’t forget a cake server.

How to execute this Victoria sponge cake recipe perfectly AKA how to stop it from sinking

To ensure your Victoria sponge is perfect and does not sink in the middle, make sure you don’t make any of these mistakes. I think I made every one of them at least once.

Mistake #1: Using old eggs

If your eggs are older than about 1 week, your cake will be flat.

How do you test it? Pour a glass of water and carefully drop an egg in it. If it sinks to the bottom on its side, the egg is fresh enough to use. If sits on the bottom with its top or bottom pointing to the top, the egg is about a week old. If it floats above the bottom or even to the top of the water, it is too old for a good Victoria sponge cake.

Mistake #2: Using eggs and butter straight from the fridge

Take your eggs and butter out of the fridge and let them get back to room temperature before using. This will normally take about 30 minutes.

Do you need to speed this up? Cut the butter into small cubes. Soak your eggs in luke-warm water for 5 minutes.

Mistake #3: Using self-raising flour

A little cornflour (AKA cornstarch) helps make the cake crumb softer. It also expands to about 6 times its volume when baking , which helps your cake rise.

Self-raising flour will not give you the rise you need and the crumb will not be as nice.

Make sure you sift your flour, cornflour and baking powder three times before adding to your batter. This will ensure it is evenly distributed throughout your cake.

You can probably use cake flour, if you have it. It’s not available here, so I would have to mix it if I want to use it.

Mistake #4: Not measuring your baking powder carefully

If you use too little baking powder, your cake will not rise. If you use too much, it will rise for a bit and then sink. I think this was the most frequent mistake I made.

Use good quality baking powder as it is the main leavening agent (it helps the cake rise). Low quality baking powder can cause the cake to sink.

Get some fresh baking powder too – expired or even old baking powder can also be responsible for the sink.

Mistake #5: Overmixing the batter

Mix the ingredients until they are just combined. Overmixing will cause too much air to be incorporated into the batter, which can cause your cake to rise too quickly and then collapse. Alternatively, it can eliminate most of the air in your cake (added through sifting flours and beating butter), and result in a flat, sad cake.

Mistake #6: Using the wrong pans

Using the wrong size cake tin can cause a Victoria sponge cake to sink. If the cake tin is too small, the cake will rise too quickly and then collapse. If it is too big, the cake will be spread too thinly. We used 10 inch cake tins. We ended up buying a second one to have two cake layers the same time.

Mistake #7: Over tapping your tin

Gently tapping your tins after filling with batter will remove bubbles. You want to remove any large air bubbles as these will probably pop during baking, causing a sinkhole. If you tap the tins too much, you will remove ALL the bubbles and have a flat, sad cake.

Mistake #8: Baking your cakes together

Let me preface this by saying, my oven is a standard size – many US ovens are much bigger.

When I try to bake the cakes together:

1. The cakes are too close together and too close to the sides of the oven (on the same rack). They bake unevenly and are lopsided.
2. There is some overlap (cakes on different racks, one over the other) so that they bake unevenly and block the flow of air.

I had much better success baking the cakes one after the other.

The results were also better when I baked the cake on the rack one below the middle.

Mistake #9: Baking the cake at the wrong temperature

Baking a Victoria sponge cake at the wrong temperature can cause it to sink.

If the oven temperature is too low, the cake will take longer to bake which can cause it to sink. If the oven temperature is too high, the cake will rise too quickly and then collapse.

The ideal temperature for baking a Victoria sponge cake is 180°C (350°F), fan forced.

Mistake #10: Opening the oven too soon

Yes, I really did make 10 different mistakes…

It is essential to avoid opening the oven door before the cake is fully baked. Opening it too early can cause a sudden drop in temperature, which can cause the cake to sink in the middle. Taking the cake out of the oven too soon will also give the cake temperature shock and make it sink.

Use your oven light to check the cake without opening the door.

What do you do if your Victoria sandwich does sink?

This is where my many failures are a benefit to you.

Sometimes, you just don’t have the time or ingredients to find an alternative, so you have to use what you have, sinkhole and all!

What worked for us:

1. Consider which layer to use as the top layer

Most times, one layer will be more affected than the others. Choose your top layer carefully and quickly, turn it out of its tin after just a couple of minutes and leave it to cool upside down. Gravity will gently help decrease the depth of your sinkhole.

2. Level off a layer

Normally, you would not do this with a Victoria sandwich cake, but desperate times call for desperate measures! Make your bottom layer ore even (and your sinkhole less noticeable) but levelling off your cake layer to give it a more consistent height. These cake levellers are perfect. If you don’t have one, use a serrated knife and a steady hand.

Start by removing only a small amount – you can always take off more, if needed.

3. Icing sugar camouflages

I’m not suggesting you fill in the sinkhole with icing sugar: that would be overkill. But icing sugar can be a helpful camouflage, so use it generally.

Particularly if you are using generous icing sugar in combination with other sinkhole disguising tactics, icing sugar can help make imperfections not as noticeable.

4. Add some fruit

There are two ways you can use fruit to counteract your sunken Victoria sponge cake.

1. Create a fruit “bomb” in the middle. Some sinkholes are so minor, generous use of whipped cream can be enough to fill the sinkhole. Even larger sinkholes can be filled with the use of fruit. I prefer to use the same fruit as jam. Creating a fruit bomb in the middle of the cake seems more deliberate than an abundance of cream. This one saved a particularly sunken monster.
2. Sprinkle fresh fruit (especially berries) on the top decoratively to disguise the sinkhole.

5. Add a cake topper

One of the worst sinkholes of course graced the Victoria sandwich cake I made of Miss M’s birthday party. It still tasted wonderful, but optically, it was suboptimal.

Fortunately, I had already made a gorgeous dinosaur cake topper to go on top. It stood right in the sinkhole and looked like the dinosaur had caused the ditch, rather than a baking deficiency. Perfect disguise!

Cake toppers, especially something that would be heavy (dinosaurs, earth movers, a house), look deliberate rather than merely camouflage.

6. Make petit fours

The buttery vanilla cake is a great texture for petit fours. If your cake is really a disaster, cut the cake up and turn them into petit fours.

No more shameful sinkholes

Can you smell the sweet vanilla? Can you see the beautiful crumb? Can you taste the milky smoothness of the cream and butter and the tang of the raspberries?

Can you see the sinkhole?

No?

It’s not because we camouflaged it (though we shared six tips on how to do that), it is because this tried and tested, foolproof recipe does not result in sinkholes.

Follow our 10 tips and the simple recipe for a delicious Victoria sponge cake that will be a delightful addition to your afternoon tea spread.

DO you like having a back-up plan in case your cake flops?

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