Victorian Gingerbread Sponge Cake with Pear Conserve Filling by Lorraine Pascale

This recipe was provided and performed by Lorraine Pascale at the 2018 Cake Bake & Sweets Show!

Ingredients:

Cake

  • 580g or plain or spelt flour
  • 26g baking powder
  • 320g coconut sugar or soft light brown sugar
  • 580g or oat milk or your fave milk
  • 160g vegan butter, melted
  • 1 tbsp ground ginger
  • I tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 12g energy egg replacer (cake will work without this but will be a little more crumbly). Frosting
  • 210g Vegan butter
  • 420g icing sugar
  • 20g stem ginger Finely chopped
  • 1 tbsp oat or your fave milk
  • 3 tbsp of almond ‘cheese’ spread
  • Big pinch of salt
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract

Filling

  • 5 tbsp pear conserve
  • Decoration
  • 8 figs, stemmed and quartered
  • 1 handful of pecans
  • Icing sugar

Method:

  1. Line 3 sandwich tins with parchment. Preheat oven to 180c.
  2. Mix all cake ingredients well and divide between the three cake tins. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the cake is springy in the centre and a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave these to cool.
  3. Once cool. Mix all the frosting ingredients together until soft and spreadable and set aside.
  4. Take a cake layer and place it on a board. Spread with buttercream., take the second sponge and spread underneath with the pear conserve and place on the first sponge. Spread this second sponge with the buttercream. Finally take the last layer and spread underneath with the pear conserve and then place this on top of the other two layers.
    If your buttercream gets too soft then pop it into the fridge to firm up a little.
  5. Then spread the whole cake with a thin layer of the buttercream giving a naked look. If your layers slide at anytime then just pop the cake in the fridge to firm up a bit.
  6. Then decorate with the figs and pecans and serve!