Hot Milk Sponge Cake for Trifle

The base for any good trifle is sponge cake. You also need how to make custard (no, no, not with custard powder, not for the true, real, genuine trifle). You have to scour the supermarkets for some affordable cooking sherry — which seems to have disappeared entirely — or save up to invest in Madeira, available only from Vintage Imports on Damien Street, Woodbrook, but well worth every drop to make a first rate trifle.

Then there’s jelly and canned fruit, perhaps whipped cream and fresh strawberries, too. We’ll see as we go along but for today let’s concentrate on basics with this recipe for Hot Milk Sponge to make the exact right kind of sponge cake you need for your trifle.

The sponge freezes well so you can make it a day, or a week in advance of making your trifle.

Practise making it a time or two, eat it with ice cream or tinned fruit and a little plain yoghurt, or by itself spread with jam and dusted with powdered sugar.

Then, when you’ve got the hand of it we’ll talk about custard... but for now, here’s how to make that Hot Milk Sponge.

Begin by lining two 8-inch round layer pans with wax or similar baking paper,

Ingredients

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

3-4 drops vanilla essence

1/2 cup hot, scalded milk.

METHOD

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a mixing bowl.

Break the eggs into another, large basin and beat them thoroughly for AT LEAST 7 MINUTES with an electric mixer until they are thick and light.

Very gradually, add the sugar, beating constantly.

Gently, but quickly, fold in the sifted dry ingredients.

Heat the milk, add the drops of vanilla.

All at once add the vanilla-flavoured scalded milk (brought to the boil and then taken off the fire before it boils over).

Fold the hot milk into the batter, thoroughly mixing it as quickly as possible.

Pour the batter into the prepared layer pans.

Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees Fahrenheit) for 30-35 minutes.

Cool for 5 minutes before carefully peeling off the wax paper on the base of the sponge cake layers.