VICTORIA SPONGE CAKE RECIPE NIGELLA LAWSON RECIPES

Steps:

• Note: You can leave out the baking powder and bicarb if dietary requirements make that desirable, but in that case, I'd use a 23cm tin instead and expect it to need slightly less cooking time.

  Put the whole orange or oranges in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours or until soft. Drain and, when cool, cut the oranges in half and remove any big pips. Then pulp everything – pith, peel and all – in a food processor, or see below if you're proceeding by hand.

  Once the fruit is cold, or near cold (though actually I most often cook the oranges the day before I make the cake), preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C. Butter and line a 20cm springform tin.

  Add the eggs, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, almonds, sugar and cocoa to the orange in the food processor. Run the motor until you have a cohesive cake mix­ture, but still slightly knobbly with the flecks of puréed orange. Or you could chop the fruit finely by hand, and with a wooden spoon beat the eggs one by one into the sugar, alter­nating with spoons of mixed ground almonds and cocoa, then the oranges, though I have to say I've only ever made this the lazy way.

  Pour and scrape into the cake tin and bake for an hour, by which time a cake tester should come out pretty well clean. Check after 45 minutes because you may have to cover with foil to prevent the cake burning before it is cooked through, or indeed it may need a little less than an hour; it all depends on your oven.

  Leave the cake to get cool in the tin, on a cooling rack. When the cake is cold you can take it out of the tin. Decorate with strips of orange peel or coarsely grated zest if you so wish, but it is darkly beautiful in its plain, unadorned state.

Steps:

• 1. Heat the oven to 180ºC/160ºC Fan, and line and lightly grease the sides of a 20cm springform cake tin. Measure the ground almonds and polenta into a bowl, add the baking powder, bicarb, and salt, and fork to mix.

  2. Pour the oil into a wide-necked large measuring jug, add the sugar and finely grate the zest of the 2 lemons on top. Stir together for a minute, then beat in the yogurt until completely incorporated. Then simply pour your jug of wet ingredients into your bowl of dry ingredients, making sure everything is completely mixed.

  3. Scrape into the prepared tin, and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, until the cake is beginning to nudge away from the sides of the tin, and a cake tester comes out clean. Make the syrup, though, as soon as the cake goes in the oven.

  4. Put the icing sugar into a small saucepan and add 75ml of juice from your zested lemons. Heat, whisking gently to beat out any lumps, just until the sugar’s dissolved into the juice, and pour straightaway into a little jug to cool.

  5. When the cake’s cooked, transfer it to a wire rack and, with your cake tester, prick it all over, going in deep, to help the syrup run down into the cake. Pour or spoon the syrup over, trying to be patient, so the syrup doesn’t just make a large pond on top.

  6. Leave the cake, drenched with its syrup, to cool and, before unclipping, run a slim palette knife round the edges to help dislodge it where the syrup has stuck it to the tin. If you don’t feel confident of getting the cake off the base in one piece, don’t worry. Serve the cake plain, or with berries of your choice.