• Serves: 5-6

• Prep time: 35 mins

  (including decorating time)

• Cooking time: 20 mins

  (plus cooling time)

• Total time: 55 mins

• Skill level: Easy peasy

• Costs: Cheap as chips

That’s goodtoknow

Top tip: ‘A properly cooked sponge cake should be firm in the middle and have slightly shrunk away from the sides of the tin. It should also spring back when you touch it.’

Cake expert, Eric Lanlard

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• Their weight in pounded sugar, butter and flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• A layer of any kind of jam or marmalade

1. Beat the butter to a cream and dredge in the flour and pounded sugar. Stir these ingredients well together, and add the eggs, which should be previously thoroughly whisked.
2. When the mixture has been well beaten for about 10 mins, butter a Yorkshire-pudding tin, pour in the batter, and bake it in a moderate oven for 20 mins.
3. Let it cool, spread one half of the cake with a layer of nice preserve, place over it the other half of the cake, press the pieces slightly together, and then cut it into long finger-pieces. Pile them in cross bars on a glass dish, and serve.

Recipe taken from Mrs. Beeton’s Cookery and Household Management, Isabella Beeton [1874] London. 

Mrs Beeton’s Cookery and Household Management is now published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, a division of the Orion Publishing Group.

Mrs Beeton is a registered trademark.

www.britegg.co.uk

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