A Royal Vicky Sponge

At the beginning of the summer I spied a gorgeous Earl Grey Victoria Sponge in the wardrobe over at lovecrumbs.  It looked awesome and I immediately fell in love with the idea of baking with tea.  That was ages ago...this weekend I finally got around to doing something about it.  

I rarely bake sandwich cakes.  I am not sure if I shy away from sandwich cakes because I don't own two tins of the same size, or because I don't really like making buttercream, or because I only have one shelf in my oven.  Whatever the deep down reason is I managed to expel it from my mind on Friday night while I rustled up this beauty.  

To start I infused some milk with Fortnum and Masons Royal Blend Tea and then got down to the business of the sponge.  I used Mary Berry's Victoria Sponge recipe from her Baking Bible (copied out by hand from the copy at the Lakeland store I used to work in) and which I have also found online.  Instead of vanilla and regular milk I added about 2 tbsp of the infused milk into the sponge batter at the end.  

The cakes were baked one after the other due to the lack of same sized tins and an extra oven shelf. Once cooled I filled the sandwich Tiptree Victoria Plum Jam and a buttercream flavoured with the infused tea.

Unlike Earl Grey, Royal Blend does not have a very distinct flavour.  I liked the idea of using a tea blended for King Edward VII in a cake named for his mother, Queen Victoria (I'm geeky like that), but the tea flavour just wasn't strong enough.  

Tea flavour or not I'm happily devouring it...

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