Royal Family Shares Recipe for Victoria Sponge Cake From Buckingham Palace Pastry Chefs

For the sponge:

First, pre-heat the oven to 180C (375F, gas mark 4).

Grease and line two eight-inch cake tins. If you only have one cake tin, you can bake the sponge and slice it in half.

Cream the caster sugar, vanilla essence and softened unsalted butter until light and fluffy. You can do this either by hand with a wooden spoon or with an electric whisk.

Whisk the eggs in a separate bowl.

Gradually add the beaten eggs to the sugar and butter mixture. Do so a little bit at a time, in order to avoid any curdling.

Sieve the flour and then gently fold into the mixture

Pour equal amounts of the cake mix into the two cake tins and smooth them over.

Place the cake tins on the middle shelf of the pre-heated oven, baking for around 20 minutes, until the cake looks golden brown.

After 20 minutes, check the cake is well-baked by inserting a skewer. If the skewer comes out clean, the cake is ready.

Remove the sponges from their tins and leave them to cool.

For the buttercream:

Cream the softened butter for the buttercream with the sieved icing sugar and seeds from the vanilla pod (or vanilla essence)​.

To assemble the cake:

Ensure that both sponges are completely cold before spreading a layer of jam onto the surface of one sponge.

Next, spread a thick layer of buttercream on top of the jam. If you prefer, you can spread the buttercream first and then do the layer of jam second.

Once the layers have been spread on one sponge, place the second sponge on top and gently press down.

Sprinkle with icing sugar and, as per the Buckingham Palace pastry chef’s suggestion, serve with a pot of fresh English tea.