Victoria Sponge (gluten-free)

A Victoria Sponge is the most simple of cake recipes, it's usually the first cake that children bake themselves. This gluten-free version is just as easy, and tastes just as good, if you weren't told it's gluten-free you wouldn't know.

recipe under the cut:

Ingredients:

For the sponge:

• 226g/8oz rice flour (rice flour is relatively easy to get hold of, we get ours from a wholefoods market stall, but it can also be found in Asian supermarkets, and possibly your usually supermarket as well)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 226g/8oz caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 8oz of butter/margarine  (I won't recommend using just margarine, as gluten-free cakes tend to need a higher fat content. I used half margarine, half butter)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract ( I like, Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Bean Paste, Nielsen-Massey, it's available in Sainsbury's for about £5. This may seem expensive, but it gives an authentic vanilla flavour)     

To make the cake a bit different you could use lavender extract, or rosewater to flavour the batter instead of the vanilla.

For the Filling;

• Strawberry jam (my favourite is tiptree)
• 4-5 strawberries
• icing sugar to dust the top

you could also use butter icing to fill the cake (made with butter and icing sugar) but I chose not to this time.

1. Pre-heat oven to 190C
2. mix together the butter/margarine and sugar until creamy 
3. add the eggs and whisk until it is lump-free (electric whisks are v. useful as it'll only take 5mins)
4. Fold in the rice flour, baking powder and vanilla paste, try to keep as much air in the mixture as possible 
5. bake in oven for about 20mins, it's ready when it feels springy to touch
6. once cooled, spread the jam on one side, arrange thinly sliced sliced strawberries on top and then sandwich both sides together. Dust with icing sugar. 

With an electric whisk it only takes about 10 mins to prepare, it's so easy you can a yummy gluten-free treat ready to eat in just over half an hour.

I want to experiment with using rice flour in some more cakes, so if you have any recipes please post them in the comments below.