Basic vanilla Victoria sponge cake

How many things that you learn in school are actually useful and delicious? At my high school in England, we all had to take two years of home economics (aka cooking) lessons. An elderly lady with a bouffant white hairdo oversaw my very first attempt at making Victoria sponge in a large lab kitchen. I remembered liking home ec lessons a lot - too bad there wasn't an option to continue them for GCSE!

I don't make plain vanilla sponge very often and have gone through a period of not being able to make a light airy sponge for the past few years. I blamed the humidity in Hong Kong for turning my attempts at sponge cake into dense bricks, but honestly, I think it was because I was trying to be too fancy and relied on complicated recipes. I've finally come full circle and accepted that there are some things in life you just shouldn't mess with, and Victoria sponge is one of them.

This sponge cake recipe is a good base for cakes and cupcakes.

Miffy in Chocolate Pinwheel land

Miffy likes chocolate pinwheels too

Gluten-free vanilla cupcakes with berry cream cheese frosting

A co-worker recently was diagnosed with gluten intolerance and has been having trouble finding gluten-free food (not just baked goods, but also a lot of Chinese food, as soy sauce contains wheat), so I decided to bake some gluten-free cupcakes to cheer her up.

I've never baked gluten-free before (besides some meringues), so I did some Googling and was initially a bit intimidated by the recipes I found, which all seemed to require unfamiliar and exotic-sounding ingredients like xanthan and guar gum. Luckily I found a gluten-free plain white flour mix by Dove's Farm (UK) at the supermarket, which can be used in place of regular wheat flour in most recipes.

Here's the recipe for the gluten-free cupcakes that I made. They came out lighter and looser than regular cupcakes, but I think my coworker will be happy to have these baked goods as they're equally tasty, even without the denser crumb of cakes made with regular wheat flour.

Homemade vanilla gelato

Two cups of milk,
one cup whipping cream,
the scrapings of a vanilla bean pod,
half a cup of sugar,
four sunset-orange egg yolks =
delicious, light, fluffy homemade gelato!

Here's how:

Split lengthways and scrape the black beans/dots from the pod and put into the milk/cream mixture.

Whisk together the egg yolks with the sugar until pale and fluffy (hand or electric mixer; the choice is yours). (Don't let the sugar sit too long on top of the egg yolks or else a "skin" will form.) I used fancy Japanese eggs, hence the beautiful orange color. You can use free range or organic eggs as well - I would recommend doing so for this gelato in order to do justice to the expensive vanilla bean!

Heat vanilla/milk/cream mixture gently in a saucepan until bubbles appear around the edges. Don't let it boil or curdle!

Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Pour carefully into the egg/sugar mixture, whisking all the while (you can use hand whisk or electric mixer). Don't worry if small lumps form - you can strain these out later.


Return the entire mixture to the saucepan and under a low heat, stir constantly until you get a custard sauce-like consistency (i.e. should be thick and viscose enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon). Take off heat immediately. Strain into a bowl (you want to keep the black vanilla bits but not any egg custard lumps/skin) and cover; chill until cool (2-3 hours or overnight).


Freeze in ice-cream maker, then place in freezer to harden. If the gelato is too hard, you can "ripen" or soften it slightly by placing it in the fridge for 30 minutes before serving.

Recipe adapted from Allrecipes.com