haha Thanks!
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I’m not even big into sweets but I like to try new recipes to improve my baking skills. I often drop off Bravetart, Milk Bar, and other baked goods in the faculty room. They love it.
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The Bravetart cinnamon rolls are pretty easy to overproof because she calls for such a long kneading time in the mixer. Unless the ingredients are pretty cold, the dough can get very warm easily. So it may have not been your fatigue at fault.
Classic Victorian Sponge from Delia.
I found this cake to be very similar to the Victorian sponge cake I have had in London.
Delia called for a 7” cake pan, it is an unusual size in the States, but I happened to have two. This is a light, tender and opened crumbed cake, we found the raspberry jam to be complementary to the cake . I used White Lily Self Rising flour but I did not add the additional teaspoon of baking powder. Parchment on bottom and sides is a necessity to prevent sticking. My only addition was to brush the tops of the cakes with a lemon verbena syrup with added Framboise.
Now that we’ve had “tea”, who wants to make supper!
I agree with mig that the cake is on the thin side, but I also think it is how it was intended, a small bite.
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Lemon brownies were a huge hit, although it turns out I used a recipe that I myself posted about here a few years ago, not the one more recently mentioned by @adawks . Note to self - take better notes on your recipes. Anyway, the website where I originally found the recipe is defunct, but fortunately I had all of the ingredients and instructions saved in RecipeSage. Similar to the recipe found here, but double the lemon juice and a different mixing technique (reverse creaming): https://www.iheartnaptime.net/lemon-brownies/
Very appealing fudgy texture, lots of lemon flavor. I might try the ATK trick of adding cream of tartar to the batter next time to see if I can boost the lemon flavor further. Glaze set up nicely at cool room temp but was a little grainy due to powdered sugar.
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May I please have a slice?
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Just for fun, attaching copies of the index from my copy of the Downton Abbey Afternoon Tea Cookbook. Let me know if you want any of the recipes, I’ll send you a copy through DM.
I haven’t tried any of the recipes yet, so can’t vouch for them. Gives you an idea, though, of what the publishers consider English tea fare.
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Be happy to provide two, in case you are feeling a bit peckish!
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Oh this is fascinating! Let me have a closer look this evening and I’ll let you know. Thank you so much for this!
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I think the “smaller” type cake when served with the “tea sandwiches”, is probably appropriate.
Any chance you could snap a photo? Very interested in these !
I love the idea of a brush with syrup - I might steal this !
I’ll post a photo of mine later, but it’s way thinner than yours. I really can’t imagine that the recipe I used is intended to produce two 8-inch cakes.
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They are 7 inch cakes, 18 cm. is what the recipe stated. If you scale up, you would get the appropriate amount, provided that’s what you would be happy with😁. I used a generous tablespoon of syrup and dabbed some on the edges.
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Interesting you did this. Growing up, standard practice for all cakes was to brush the layers with sugar syrup, which kept them from drying out in the coming days. This was when we only used butter, never oil.
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Makes sense since, as you well know, oil always produces a cake that is moist and stays moist. It was a spur of the moment to decision to give them a brush with syrup. Now you have made me think of making this will light flavored olive oil 
I also put a jigger sized glass of Pellegrino under the cake dome.
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Unfortunately I forgot to grab one before they were devoured, but they ended up looking very much like this (from the linked blog):
I would say mine were a little flatter and fudgier, though, likely because of the extra lemon juice and the reverse creaming technique (cream butter with flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and zest, then add liquid ingredients), which helps prevent excess gluten formation.
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I used to have Kaiser cake pans that were marked 8”, and they were perfect for recipes for 8” cakes. Then my wife put them into the dishwasher, and they rusted, so I looked for replacements. The 8” pans I bought were larger than my Kaiser pans; turns out the Kaisers were actually 7.5”, per my measurements.
So, in case of problems, measure your pans.
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My mother had Kaiser springform pans for decades (until eventually the bases warped and/or the latches broke) that were, indeed, all a half inch smaller than their alleged measurements.
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