As I continue my London withdraw, I am trying to make all the British recipes I didn’t get to try in the tiny, overcrowded kitchen at my house in Notting Hill. Now that I am back stateside I have a lot more time to bake up everything I missed out on. During my time in England, Victoria Sponge has become one of my favourites. As I have said before, my London “diet” consisted of a crazy amount of walking and at least one piece of cake a day. When you live in England, this isn’t something new as tea time often includes a sweet. Victoria Sponge cake is by far one of the most classic examples of a teatime treat. It’s often overshadowed by fancier and showier puddings (that means desserts) but it remains my favorite.
Victoria Sponge cake is light yet decadent and perfect for an afternoon snack, a party, or just as dessert. It is best described as a sandwich cake with strawberry jam and whipped cream in the middle, some versions even use delicious lemon curd in place of jam. A lot of the by the slice versions I had in London used a white icing and strawberry jam to sandwich the two layers of this sponge cake. But if you want a really good Victoria Sponge, do yourself a favor and make homemade whipped cream. Whenever I make a “cheater” cake out of a box, I always make the icing like that this cake deserves a real whipped cream. I also add amaretto liqueur to my whipped cream which made all the difference!
As for the jam layer, I used a simple strawberry jam, but if you are feeling fancy try fresh strawberry slices, lemon curd (if you are joining us from the UK,) or perhaps another type of your favourite jam.
My favourite is strawberry, so you can see why I like this cake so much!
Either way I hope you try this traditional teatime treat.
1 cup butter, softened (Save the butter wrappers to butter the pan) 1 cup sugar 4 large eggs 2 tsp vanilla extract 1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted (you may need a bit extra) 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt
For the filling: strawberry jam 1 cup heavy whipping cream 2 tbsp. Disaronno or Amaretto liqueur 2 tbsp. fine sugar
To serve: powdered sugar, for dusting
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350F. Brush two 8 inch cake tins with the butter wrappers. Line the bottom of the two cake tins with a circle of parchment paper.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and vanilla, until pale and creamy, using an electric whisk or a wooden spoon. Beat well to ensure you get lots of air into the mixture.
Beat in the eggs one at a time. You want to avoid the mixture curdling, so that it stays airy. If it does curdle, add a tbsp of flour.
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Fold the flour mixture into the wet ingredients using a large metal spoon (this will cut into the mixture better than a wooden spoon). Be careful not to over-mix it. Pour the mixture equally between the two cake tins and level.
Place in the oven and bake for about 20-25 minutes, or until the cakes are well-risen, spring back when pressed gently with a finger and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove from the oven and set aside for 5 minutes, then remove from the tin and peel off the paper. Place onto a wire rack and let cool completely, about an hour.
While cakes are cooling, whip heavy whipping cream with fine sugar and amaretto with electric beaters until soft peaks form.
Once cakes are cooled, sandwich the cakes together with the jam and whipped cream. Dust with powdered sugar and serve.
As promised, I am happy to announce my second
giveaway here on The College Cuisiner.
Today is my last official day in London so I thought
it would be appropriate to offer a healthy and natural British foodie package
to all of my stateside readers.
Usually British food has the reputation for being
tasteless, fattening, and kind of gross. This is not true! In fact food in
Britain has hardly any preservatives or additives and is much more natural than
American food. Food here goes bad in three days or less which is both good and
bad for a college student who wants healthy food but is on a budget and does not
want to buy it too often.
But not all my readers have that luxury so I am
going to give a little taste of the British Isles. Too bad I can’t send back some Coronation Chicken salad! ( I will
have to make/post this VERY soon.)
It all started when I found a great Vegetarian
cookbook in a used bookstore in Greenwich. As soon as I saw it I thought it
would be a great giveaway (even if I want to keep it for myself!)
But because I am a gracious foodie blogger I decided
to share it with you. This week I hope to feature at least two of the recipes
from this book to entice you even more to enter!
College
Cuisiner Giveaway Package:
·Entertaining
With Friends: Vegetarian Recipes for all occasions by
Simon Hope
·Two Natural snack bars: Coco Love and
Banana Bread
·One Doves Farm Organic Apple &
Sultana Flapjack bar
·And a surprise item
to be announced…
Three
Simple Rules:
·To enter leave a comment telling me
about your favorite natural food! (Honorary Kudos if it’s British.)
·Like
“The College Cuisiner” on Facebook for an extra entry!
·Sorry only open to US and Canadian
readers!
Entries for the giveaway will end on Thursday, April
26th at 5pm and I will announce the winner using a randomly
generated code that Friday, April 27th!
Thanks for entering! Can’t wait to hear from you
all!
This last week has been particularly hectic for me as my time here in London comes to an end. Last Wednesday after my final exam I had to rush to meet my mum, Mackenzie, and Jon who just arrived in London that morning. We have seen so much during their short trip and I was happy they got to see London as I have been lucky enough to these past few months.
Since then I have only checked my email twice and could obviously not blog thanks to no hotel internet and a ridiculously busy schedule. So do to that this will be a short-ish post.
On the upside we have seen quite a bit and eaten even more. Over the Easter holiday we visited with my Aunt Janet and Uncle Maurice in the village of Fairlight in Sussex County on the Southern coast of England. We stayed in an adorable little B&B right down the hill from their house and were served full English Breakfasts every day! (Mine without the bacon or sausage of course) From Saturday to Tuesday we were stuffed to the gills with delicious homemade meals, afternoon teas, and treats from my Aunt. This would have been the highlight of the trip if the company wasn’t so fabulous! (Which is was.)
To top it off, lots of fruits and veggies for the April WIAW challenge too!
Here are some of the amazing meals we were given over the Easter weekend:
Saturday
Late Lunch
Coronation Chicken tea Sandwiches and Prawn Mayonnaise sandwiches
Herb marinated chicken, crispy oven potatoes, roasted vegetables
Red cabbage and Cucumber salad
Monday
Mocha at the De Le Warr Art gallery and community centre
Lunch
Penne Alla at Simply Italian in Rye
Tea Time
More fabulous food and tea of course.
Dinner
Various elements of the weekends’ meals with the addition of fresh salads and a pecan apple tart.
We had such a lovely trip despite the awful rainy, windy, cold weather that my family has seemed to have brought with them to break up the two week heat wave in England. Thanks a lot! But the best bits are all do to my Aunt and Uncle who worked so hard to show us around and make us feel at home. Luckily the next time we will see them will be next summer for my wedding rather than the ten year gap that preceded this visit (and my time here this semester.)
A quick preview of some other highlights from my family’s visit:
Coach trip to Hampton Court, (Stonehenge again, ugh) and amazing Bath (for a split second!)
The Warner Brothers Harry Potter Tour! Ahhh magical!!!
Windmills
Family
The busy schedule continues! I hope that Friday I can recap more of our visit, my recipe for curry quinoa and sweet potatoes, and announce my London giveaway! Come back Friday to see what I am giving away to one lucky reader! It’s pretty good if I do say myself!
When thinking about how to incorporate more “green" into my week it felt like the perfect time to tell you all about my trip to Greenwich just outside London. It definitely goes with the WIAW Green theme.
I’ve definitely been consciously considering how
many greens and vegetables I pack into every meal and been doing pretty well
with it even though I do love vegetables already!
In addition I am just not eating meals like this:
But back to Greenwich.
This is just on the edge of the city but feels forever
away. It has trees and a park! Yes, I currently live 5 minutes from Kensington
Park but this is different, so nice.
It has a village feel with a proper town center and
a great line of shops that seem like it’s from another area: butcher, cheese
shop, vegetable monger, and flower store all in a row. I’m not sure if it is technically
“outside” London but it definitely acts and feels that way. Lovely!
We met some lovely people and took a walk
around in celebration of Mary Kate’s 21st birthday. We briefly went
inside the National Maritime Museum and around walked outside of the Royal
Observatory.
It was just too beautiful a day to be in doors.
I’ve realized that sometimes I tend to oversimplify
my travel and let the photos do the talking. Because of that I thought it might
be a good idea to give you something to fill in the gaps. My roommate Mary Kate has her own blog that is dedicated to her time abroad. Since we are normally together, she tends to write more and just as much about what I do. If you what some more info and just a generally good read, check out her blog at Living London.
Funny enough we’ve been celebrating this girl’sbirthday all weekend but hey you only turn 21 once, and she got to do it here.
If you do stop by please wish her a happy 21st,
and tell her I sent you!
After working up an appetite we went to a little
teashop called Royal Teas because the
street is was on was called Royal Hill. Clever tea people.
They had a “Cream tea” for only £6.95 but strangely
it looked more like a full tea trolley to me, tea, two salmon, cucumber, and
cream sandwiches, large fruit scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam, and
a piece of homemade cake at the end! Can’t get better than that! Everything
here was decent price but I suppose that is what happens when you get a little
outside London, things are so not so ridiculously overpriced here. This was lunch and we
were so full we had to order the cake takeaway. When I told the people from my program
they couldn’t believe we found a full tea this cheap. Winning!
For a good review on this adorable place check out a
blog post from the Greenwich Phantom.
I want to show you our lovely tea and my other green
meals from yesterday and today so I will start in order.
Two pots of Loose leaf Earl Gray
Salmon, Cucumber, and Cream cheese tea sandwiches
(full sized to me) with lemon and salad garnish, which I put in my sandwiches
Large fruit scone with clotted cream and strawberry
jam
Lunch today just because I was so “green” in the
square park, (which has wifi!)
Mixed greens salad with cucumbers, chickpeas, grain
salad (lentils, quinoa etc.) roastedred
peppers, beet straws, cherry tomatoes, hummous and roasted seeds in a low fat
dressing with a tortilla for the hummous.
Apple from the market
Sparkling organic orange juice
Sea salt crisps. (all from Pret except for the
apple.)
I feel so green.
Lots of green and other colored veggies!
I had such a good weekend in London. It was
record-breakingly beautiful and I spent it between markets, reading outside,
and eating of course. Not to mention the Pimm’s I’ve had at three separate
places. I love Spring and jugs of Pimm’s split between friends! I’ll have to
post a recipe for it. Monday we went to see One
Man, Two Guvnors for our theatre class. It was so funny and definitely a
crowd pleaser. I love that they brought up members of the audience and
interacted, it was so brilliant. It’s coming to Broadway so try to see it if
you can!
p.s. it’s pronounce as “Gren itch” not “Green wich”
which if not from the Village in NYC, I probably would have referred to it as
the latter. Strange English words.
How
was your weekend? Have you seen the Hunger Games yet?
First off if you have not seen my post from Monday check out it first before reading the below post. If not, beware of spoilers!
I feel so guilty about missing WIAW last week due to Aaron’s visit and a major Sociology paper. So I must make up for it! Today I’ll give you a taste of what I’ve eaten this week. Get it.
You got a pretty good look at our trip to Paris and
a selection of the 200+ pictures but Aaron was here longer than that!
Unfortunately I still had to go to class this week so I had send him off to do
the “touristy” things by himself and occasionally with escorts provided by my
housemates.
Here are some of his London photos on my camera:
On Thursday we had the chance to go to St. Alban’s
and have a lovely dinner with Tony and Gill, my surrogate family here. We had a
lovely time to celebrate Tony’s birthday and our engagement. Gill said she is
already picking out her hat for the wedding. I love that they wear fancy hats
here to special occasions. We had such a great time visiting with them and St.
Alban’s is so cute.
On Friday we took an early train down to Hastings to
visit my Aunt Janet and Uncle Maurice for the day. We lucked out with the
weather and spent the day going around my favorite little town of Rye Royal,
and later going to Fairlight where they live.
We met them in Hastings and then drove to Rye for lunch at a place we used to go to when I was last in England 10 years ago. It’s a great little Italian restaurant and they
“remembered” me but hey, we got free wine and after meal limoncello out of it
so they must of remembered! It was so nice.
Here’s what we ate:
Aaron’s seafood pasta and Maurice’s pasta Carbonara.
I think Janet had sea bass with roasted potatoes and
vegetable if I remember properly.
I had mushroom and chicken risotto.
We then went back to their house for a great
homemade cream tea. Should have taken a photo.
First we had some sparkling wine to celebrate the
engagement of course! Aunt J got the scones from her favorite restaurant and
tea shop and since they make them homemade it counted! We have some delicious
Jersey Clotted cream and her homemade black currant jam to go along. Yummmm…
Not to mention the delicious smoky Earl Gray tea and additional chocolate biscuits.
This was one of the best teas I have had so far, I only wish I could have
afternoon company with them more often!
And once again I could kick myself for not taking a
group photo of the four of us! Well, I have to wait until Easter when I see
Janet and Maurice again.
I’m
guessing that was all a part of Janet’s evil plan though…because somehow she
got about 15 photos of Aaron and myself! But it's okay because she gave us one of the photos from that day framed as an engagment gift. Thank you Aunt Janet!
Then after a leisurely afternoon we took the train
back to London and met my cousin Martin and his friend Andrew for a drink and
jazz in Covent Garden. Finally tired and starving, Aaron and I dragged
ourselves home to pass out before his flight in the morning.
But wait, what did I what eat this weekend?
Ready for Saturday?
After dropping Aaron out at Heathrow, I rode on the
tube an hour to Borough Market so I couldn’t shut myself in my room and wallow.
One mango orange juice and a cocoa tea later I still didn’t feel much better.
So I grabbed a Mediterranean lunch box to-go and went home to eat it alone.
Don’t feel bad, it was delicious. I
should have taken photos.
I was practically all by myself as the rest of my
housemates were in Wales so I had the house and
the telly to myself for once! So I proceeded to rent and watch the entire
second series of Downton Abbey along with a dinner I made late Saturday night.
So
worth it.
After picking up some red beets and wild garlic
leaves at Borough I went to town!
I had never tried wild garlic before but was
willing to give it a whirl. It is gaining in popularity here and I found it at
many a stand at Borough. I proceeded to add it to every portion of my meal.
Baked chicken breast stuffed with mushroom pate and
wild garlic. Yummmmmmmm….
And Mashed sweet potatoes with wild garlic....
And
the wild garlic is green so it totally goes into this month’s WIAW theme!
I’m not sure if wild garlic is readily available in
the States, but here is London it is at all the markets. If you can find it, do
try it. Wild garlic gives a delicious garlic flavor that’s less bitey than
normal garlic but with all the deliciousness and healthiness of the bulb.
I struggled over which recipe to share. I do think
everyone should try the beets but since the sweet potatoes are pretty self
explanatory and sooooooo delicious I thought this would be a good recipe for
WIAW despite my lack of photos.
Mashed
Sweet Potatoes with Wild Garlic: 2 Servings (easily doubled)
Ingredients:
2-3 large sweet
potatoes, peeled, chopped into small chunks
One banana shallot, cut
in half (a small yellow onion works too)
3-5 leaves of wild
garlic, roughly chopped (alter depending on your garlic preference)
1 tsp. butter
1/2 tsp. garlic salt
salt for water
Splash of skimmed milk
Directions:
Bring a pot of salted
water, banana shallot and cut sweet potatoes to boil, covered.
Once water begins to
boil, take off lid and continue boiling for 10-20 minutes depending on how
small you cut your potatoes. Check the doneness by piercing a potato chunk with
a fork, should be soft enough to slice the potato.
Once potatoes are done
drain the water.
In the pot (NOT ON
HEAT) mashed the potatoes and shallot so they are well mixed. Add chopped wild
garlic, garlic salt, butter. Mix and add milk depending on desired consistency.
Eat while hot with any
meal!
Sweet
potatoes are so good for you and such an inexpensive treat. Try this recipe to
add a little more “sweet” to your life! And make some red beets while you are at it!
Because I haven’t done a Cuisiner Playlist in a
while I thought I would recommend checking out Keane’s new single, “Silenced By
the Night.” The album doesn’t come out until May 7th but I am SO
EXCITED! I missed Keane. Check it out and buy this album I need more of this band
in my life!
