Queen Victoria Biscuit: Recipe, Ingredients, Cooking Tips

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

There are several types of biscuits: classic, vanilla, chiffon, Victorian. The latter is also called the Queen Victoria biscuit. Its recipe with a step-by-step description of all actions will be presented in our article.

Incredible Queen Victoria Biscuit

This amazingly delicious dessert, or rather, cake, can be safely called one of the most popular in the UK. In many English cafes, he is wildly popular. And if we take into account the fact that a biscuit is prepared from the simplest ingredients, then it is almost impossible to explain the appearance of such an interesting taste and unusual texture. The fluffy cake is both soft and elastic at the same time. It has a porous texture, crumbles a little when cut, but remains moist inside. This is how the perfect Queen Victoria biscuit from Andy Chef turns out. The recipe for its preparation will be presented below.

The Victorian biscuit has an interesting history. According to legend, after the death of Queen Victoria's husband (Prince Albert), she completelywithdrew from society. It wasn't until a few years later that Her Majesty began hosting tea parties in the garden again, where a popular dessert was a fluffy biscuit layered with strawberry jam. It was he who became the favorite cake of the British Queen.

List of ingredients

According to the classic recipe, the Queen Victoria biscuit is made from the following ingredients:

• eggs - 4 pcs.;
• butter - 250 g;
• sugar - 250 g;
• flour - 250 g;
• baking powder - 8 g;
• vanilla extract - 2 tsp;
• lemon zest - to taste.

Strawberry confiture is used for layering biscuit cakes. It should be prepared with the following ingredients:

• strawberries - 500 g;
• powdered sugar - 300 g;
• agar-agar - 3 g;
• lemon juice - 25 ml.

For a gentle cream you will need:

• cream with 33-38% fat content - 400 ml;
• powdered sugar - 100g

Fresh strawberries are perfect for cake decorating.

How to knead dough for biscuit?

To achieve a special, porous and dense texture of the cake is possible only if you strictly follow all the steps provided for in the recipe:

1. Pour soft butter at room temperature into a clean and dry deep bowl and cover with sugar.
2. Beat the ingredients well with a mixer for 5 minutes. The consistency should become smooth, creamy.
3. To creamymix in all the eggs one at a time, each time beating them well for 1 minute.
4. In a separate bowl combine flour with baking powder and mix.
5. Piece the flour mixture into the creamy mass, beating at low speed of the mixer.
6. Add grated lemon zest and vanilla extract to the dough.
7. Soft, smooth, cream-like dough, ready. Now it can be laid out in a suitable size dish and baked in a preheated oven.

How to bake a fluffy biscuit?

For baking a cake, a shape with a diameter of 20 cm or even 16 cm is ideal. In the latter case, you get a small but tall biscuit that will look original on the table. When baking the cake, you should follow the following sequence of actions:

1. Preheat the oven to 190°.
2. Cover the bottom of the form with parchment. So the biscuit will be easier to remove from it.
3. Grease the side walls of the form with butter and sprinkle with flour on top, and shake off the excess. This is the so-called "French shirt" used by professional confectioners.
4. Put the dough into the form. It is enough for 2 cakes at once. The dough should be thick. And this is its main difference from traditional biscuits.
5. Smooth the dough with a spatula to make the surface as even as possible.
6. Immediately place the mold in the preheated oven for 25 minutes. As soon as the surface is slightly browned, you should check the readiness of the biscuit with a toothpick.
7. Remove the form with the finished cake from the oven and leave it on the wire rack for 5 minutes.
8. Cool the finished biscuit well. It is advisable to turn it upside down and put it on the grill to get rid of the characteristic dome.

Strawberry Confiture

The original recipe uses berry jam as a layer for the biscuit. That's what the British call it. But the French use the word "confiture" for this. But the essence is the same - the berry layer makes the biscuit juicy, moist, tender, amazingly tasty.

You can prepare strawberry confiture for a cake according to the following step-by-step recipe:

1. Soak agar-agar (3 g) in a little water and leave at room temperature for 20 minutes.
2. Chop the washed berries (500 g) with an immersion blender until puree.
3. Sprinkle the strawberry mass with fine sugar or powder (300 g).
4. Put the jam on a small fire, bring it to a boil and, periodically removing the foam, cook it for 5 minutes.
5. Pour the swollen agar-agar into a saucepan. Bring it to a boil and immediately remove from heat.
6. Add liquid agar-agar and lemon juice (25 ml) to the jam. Cook it for another 1 minute, cool a little and pour into jars.
7. This amount of ingredients should make 750 ml of strawberry confiture.
8. Queen Victoria biscuit only needs 4 tablespoons of jam. The rest of the jam can be stored in the refrigerator for 2-3 months.

Cream of whipped cream for biscuitQueen Victoria

Cream will help to perfect the taste of biscuit cakes and exquisite berry confiture. Soft whipped cream is perfect for this cake.

Cream for Queen Victoria Biscuit Recipe is prepared as follows:

1. Place the whisk, beaters and cream in the freezer 15 minutes before working with the ingredients.
2. Pour the cream into a cold bowl.
3. Add powdered sugar.
4. Beat the ingredients with a mixer at high speed. At first it may seem that nothing is happening and the cream will remain liquid. But at about the fifth minute of whipping, they will begin to thicken. As soon as the mass keeps its shape well, and the peaks become stable, the whipping process should be stopped. Otherwise, the cream will turn into butter.

Assembling and decorating the cake

Whipped cream and marmalade are used to layer the cake. Such filling makes the cake so self-sufficient that there is no need for any special decoration. You can simply dust the biscuit with powdered sugar and decorate it with whole strawberries on top.

The cake is assembled in the following sequence:

1. Strawberry jam (4 tbsp.) slightly warm in the microwave or in a water bath to become liquid.
2. Berries (5-10 pcs.) Wash, dry and cut into thin slices. Combine fresh strawberries with jam and stir.
3. Spreadstrawberry confiture on the bottom cake. While the jam is liquid, it will soak the biscuit properly, and then it will harden and hold its shape well.
4. Spread whipped cream on top of the berry jam.
5. Cover the cake with the second layer.
6. Decorate the Victorian biscuit however you like.

Cooking tips and tricks

To make the biscuit really tasty and very similar to the original, when baking and assembling it, it will not be out of place to use the following tips from experienced pastry chefs:

1. As in the reign of Queen Victoria, the biscuit recipe is based on one mandatory rule: the ingredients for the cake, such as flour, butter and sugar, are taken in equal quantities.
2. An important condition for making a Victorian biscuit is the exact weighing of all products. Moreover, experienced confectioners recommend using scales not only for butter and bulk products, but also for eggs. They should be weighed without the shell.
3. Cake layers can be layered with jam and cream immediately after baking. But you can make them even more wet. To do this, wrap them in cling film and put in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

How to thicken cream?

The tricky part of making a Victorian sponge cake is that the dense sponge cake can be too heavy for the soft whipped cream. As a result, a high strawberry-creamy layer will turn into a flat cake. This cake looks likeunpresentable and unappetizing. How to make cake cream thick?

There are only two options to get out of this situation. The first involves the use of a special thickener when whipping cream, which will make the cream more dense. In the second case, it is recommended to add cream cheese to whipped cream. As a result, the consistency of the cream will become more dense. It will keep its shape well and not fall even under the weight of elastic Victorian biscuit.

To prepare such a cream, you must first beat 100 ml of cream to stable peaks. Then add 100 g of powdered sugar and 300-400 g of cream cheese to the resulting mass. Beat the ingredients again until the mass becomes homogeneous. This cream holds its shape well and lacks any oily taste.