I have alway loved baking, especially cupcakes!

However, I have never endeavoured to make at double layered cake. So, as part of my 2025 challenge, I wanted to try making something different from my norm. The 25 challenges I have committed to this year is broken down into 5 sub-categories and making a double layered cake falls under the ‘hobbies’ group. This group of five activities is aimed to expand my creativity and allowing me to get stuck into new hobbies I have never had the chance to try before.

I have wanted to try making a multi-layered cake for many years. But, under constant pressure from my family to stick to making the fairy cakes I have perfected over the years, I have never broken away from what I know best. But, this year I have found the perfect excuse in my 2025 challenge to take on this new baking challenge.

Making the cake was a very enjoyable experience, but eating it was event better!

Using the same cake batter mixture I normally use for fairy cakes, I created two disc cakes and joined them together with whipped cream and jam. This was my first attempt at making a Victoria sponge cake and even though it was great success, I still learnt a lot from this first time which I want to incorporate into future cake baking.

Originally I planned to make one disc cake and cut in two halves. However, after finding two matching cake tins, and maybe getting a little overzealous with my plans, I made a double batch to fill both tins. The end result was an overwhelmingly large cake!

I also realised I have a long way to go in perfecting the art of adding the cementing whipped cream and jam between the cake layers. Making the mistake of laying the cream too close to the edge of the cake, when adding the heavy second layer, much of the filling escaped out of the edges. This also made it pretty troublesome when trying to cut slices as the inner most layer oozed out of the sides and left quite a mess on the cutting stand. This also mean much of the cake was missing its creamy filling.

Additionally, due to my and my families impatience to try the cake, the cream and jam layer was added before the cake had been allowed to completely cool. This meant that the whipped cream and jam melted into the cake layers. Although this made for a very moist and tasty cake, it meant it was not a pretty as I was hopping for…

Overall, it was a very fun afternoon baking activity and I cannot wait to try it again. Next time I will take onboard the problems I came across with this first cake. I am hoping that by allowing the cake to cool fully then adding the filling to the centre of the cake, but leaving a gap for it to expand into when the next layer is added, the cake will look a lot better and more closely resemble a proper Victoria sponge cake. I would also like to experiment with making just one cake then divide it in two so the overall cake is smaller and therefore a more manageable portion size. This is something I have seen my grandmother do with many of her cakes and admittedly it looks far more difficult than I was expecting, as it can be tricky to get the haves to be equal in size. But it is a challenge I am looking forward to trying one day.

If you would like to try this rather perfectly imperfect recipe, you can download and save the recipe card here.