Top 10 Great British cakes
Victoria Sponge
Nothing beats the beautiful simplicity of a well-baked Victoria sponge (pictured above). Sift your flour three times, use room-temperature ingredients, and don’t open the oven door during baking to ensure perfect results every time.
Rock Cakes
My mum’s favourite. A proper rock cake should be golden brown, flecked with ample dry fruit, and leave a lot of crumbs behind. This recipe from The Great British Book of Baking gives a slightly moist bake, which means you won’t need to coat them in butter.
Carrot cake
The original and best vegetable cake, here made by Stella McCartney with the addition of walnuts, desiccated coconut, raisins and maple syrup. Everyone has their favourite carrot cake recipe – this one is most definitely ours.
Scones
The ultimate summertime bake. Ed Baines adds fresh raspberries to his dough, giving his scones fantastic streaks of red and added texture. The question is: do you put clotted cream on your scone first and then jam, or the other way around?
Swiss Roll
Probably the fiddliest cake in our collection, but also the lightest. Try filling your swiss roll with homemade lemon curd instead of jam, and remember to let the greaseproof paper guide you when it comes to the rolling part!
Blackberry bakewell cake
Like the tart, only better. TV favourite Gizzi Erskine makes her cake butter-free, instead using a whole boiled orange to bind the ingredients together. There are a lot of ground almonds in there too, to keep the cake moist and true to its Bakewell name.
Eccles cakes
Chef Tristan Welch packs his eccles cakes with plump sultanas (as opposed to the usual currants), spices, orange zest and walnuts, encasing it all with golden puff pastry. Remember to sprinkle your eccles with sugar before baking, to give a sweet crust.
Banana bread
Always trust a Rachel Allen recipe. Here she makes a wonderfully moist tea bread with bananas, walnuts, chocolate chunks and orange zest. Perfect with a cuppa, or bake a loaf and take it into work – you’ll be employee of the month.
West country cake
A bramley apple sponge topped with pretty glazed strawberries. Let’s all go to the West Country for cake! Did you know that strawberries contain more vitamin C than oranges, are high in fibre, and are a good source of folic acid?
Gingerbread
A sticky slab of gingerbread is just the ticket for an afternoon treat. Peter Sidwell based his recipe on a childhood love of ginger nut biscuits, and it includes black treacle and spices to give that rich, warm sweetness we all know and love.
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