Plain Flour for Victoria Sponge

Our answer

Nigella's Victoria Sponge (from Domestic Goddess) uses a combination of self-raising flour and cornflour (cornstarch) as the cornflour helps to produce a more tender crumb. It is possible to substitute the self-raising flour with a combination of plain (all-purpose) flour and baking powder. Nigella usually recommends using 2 teaspoons of baking powder for each 150g (1 cup) plain flour. So for this recipe you would need to use 200g (1 1/3 cups) plain flour plus 2 3/4 teaspoons of baking powder instead of the self-raising flour.

If you are making the cake with the all-in one food processor method then Nigella recommends adding an extra teaspoon of baking powder. This helps to give extra lift to the cake as omitting the creaming of the butter and sugar means that you are not incorporating the same amout of air into the batter and it is instead helped by the extra boost of leavening. So in total you would need to use 3 3/4 teaspoons of baking powder.