Mini Strawberry and Cream Sponge Cake Tiny Tea Time

This tiny cake is a really good excuse to make a full size one for yourself because I defy anyone to whisk up just a teaspoon of sponge cake mix!

The classic Swiss Roll/Jelly Roll recipe is one my family has used for years. It is super easy with few ingredients but delicious because it comprises good quality staples, including, in our case, home-raised eggs from our forest garden hens. My Grandma always used the 3 x 3 rule of sponge cake making: 3oz of flour, 3oz sugar and 3 eggs but I've found that halving the sugar works just as well, this particularly if you are using, as I am, all organic ingredients, where the sugar is actually quite a lot sweeter than the conventional kind.

Below I've set out the ingredients in three forms (cups, oz and g) for making a classic Swiss Roll/Jelly Roll sponge, with the understanding that for the tiny cake I will only be using 1 teaspoon of the mix. However as you will appreciate from the photos I've actually made a much bigger version (10 eggs), which I was supposed to freeze but actually.... we ate.

I also include, where relevant, a few useful sponge cake tips.

INGREDIENTS

¼ cup - 1½oz - 40g raw organic blonde cane sugar (sometimes called organic 'white' sugar)

⅔ cup - 3oz - 85g of organic all purpose/plain flour

½ teaspoon of baking powder

3 organic eggs

DECORATION

Powdered raw organic blonde cane sugar for sprinkling on top of cake

Strawberry Jam

Thick Cream

EQUIPMENT

Whisk

Bowl

Sieve

Serrated Knife

A Small Round or Shaped Pastry/Cookie Cutter

Unbleached Parchment/Baking Paper

Classic 16”x12”x1” jelly roll pan/Swiss roll tin

A Large Stainless Steel Spoon

Teaspoon

Firstly prepare the tiny cookie cutter by lightly greasing the interior of it with butter and then lining with parchment paper and placing a square of parchment paper beneath the cutter to hold the cake mix in place. Just to give you an idea of size, my cookie cutter has a diameter of 1⅓" - 35mm.

Repeat the same process for your jelly roll/cake tin or pan to make the larger cake.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 °F - 180°C

Place the sugar in the bowl and add the eggs.

Whisk until creamy and light in colour.

TIP This is a really useful test to tell if you have whisked the egg and sugar to optimum 'fluffiness' for a super light cake and one my mother picked up from a TV program in Scotland:

• when you think the mix looks creamy enough, switch off the whisk (or stop whisking manually) and let a ribbon of the mixture fall from the blades of the whisk onto the surface of the sugar and egg combination. This should stay visible for 11 seconds before it disappears down into the mixture. I usually have a sort of feel for when this happens but the above photo shows an initial test which had a 8 seconds delay too!

Add the sieved flour and baking powder by slowly stirring it into the egg mixture using a figure of eight motion with a large stainless steel spoon.

Place just one teaspoon of mix into the cookie cutter and put it on the middle shelf of the oven for around 5-6 minutes or until the cake springs back into shape when just pressed lightly with the fingers.

The remaining cake mixture can then be placed into the prepared cake tray and gently and evenly smoothed out with a spatula making sure that the mix settles evenly into the corners as well. The cake can then be placed on the middle shelf of the oven for around 12 - 15 minutes.

TIP Something I have learned from experience! When opening the oven door to check on the cake, make sure when you've completed the 'finger touch' test that you close the oven door very gently. Any swift gesture which causes an ingress of cold air or banging the door, which creates vibrations to the body of the oven can cause your beautiful sponge cake to fall flat!

TIP Wait until your mini sponge cake has cooled slightly and is beginning to shrink away from the sides of the cutter before removing it.

You may need to run the tip of a sharp knife around the gap between the cookie cutter and the parchment paper before it releases.

Once the cake is cool enough to hold, gently peel the parchment paper from it.

TIP Leave to cool in the open air and leave out overnight before attempting to slice it into three.

Decorate with strawberry jam. I had home-made frozen strawberry pureé and just heated it with a little extra sugar and allowed it to simmer down to the consistency of jam/jelly.

I then spread the strawberry jam on one layer and cream on the other and sandwiched the cake together.

TIP For the topping I made some icing sugar by grinding up a little raw organic blonde cane sugar - organic icing sugar is quite pricey and it is really easy to make.

I ironed a table napkin to make a tablecloth, set up a miniature tea service and then went out in the garden to find the tiniest wild and garden flowers I could and placed them in a mini china water jug.

I set three chairs around the table and placed three of my miniature vintage and antique toys in them.

I used a home-made screen and some fine printed tissue paper to create the backdrop.

Then I served the cake.

I took a whole selection of images, in natural sunlight until I had just the right ones I wanted.

I used Openshot on Linux to create the mini animation.

Cutting the cake was the biggest challenge! However, I think that keeping it for a day out in the open air was the secret as to why it was neither squished or worse nor fell apart when cutting the slices!

Hope you enjoyed this Instructable and if you are wondering what happened to the mini cake, then three of my hens had a late nigh feast and loved it! As for the larger sponge, we had three days of glorious afternoon tea and morning coffee - thank you Instructables for giving me the idea and excuse!