A half‑century ago, when English schools still believed that boys should saw bits of wood while girls learned how to feed a family on a post‑war budget, I insisted — stubbornly, cheerfully — on taking cookery. The only boy in the class. The mid‑60s. A tiny domestic rebellion disguised as timetabling.
Our first task was the Victoria Sponge Sandwich. It looked harmless enough, sitting there in the textbook like a well‑behaved child. But according to the tedious little woman who “taught” us, it was practically a moral examination. Cream the butter and sugar until pale. Paler than that. Eggs beaten in one drop at a time, as if the fate of civilisation depended on it. Fold the flour. Fold it. Don’t stir it. She inspected my bowl as if she were checking for signs of delinquency.
I liked to wind her up.
“Is this the right constituency, Miss?”
“You mean consistency.”
“That’s what I said, Miss.”
I could have kept it going all day if the bell hadn’t always rescued her.
What I didn’t know then – sweating over a bowl, performing femininity badly and masculinity worse – was that the Victoria sponge has always been a cake obsessed with rules. Britishness loves a rule, especially one that can be enforced in a kitchen. The sponge is full of them: equal weights, no peeking in the oven, use only jam according to the Women’s Institute. A whole culture of correctness baked into something supposedly simple.
No wonder my teacher treated it like scripture. She was only passing on the faith.
The myths around the sponge are almost as airy as the cake itself. People like to say Queen Victoria invented it, or that it cured her grief after Albert died. She didn’t, and it didn’t. She simply ate a lot of it – which, to be fair, is the most relatable thing about her.
The real architect was Anna Russell, Duchess of Bedford, who in the 1840s found herself faint with hunger between luncheon and an 8 p.m. dinner. She began inviting friends for tea and a light snack. Victoria adopted the ritual, and suddenly the sponge – already in existence – became the star of afternoon tea at Osborne House. A royal endorsement before the concept existed.
I sometimes think of that when I remember myself in that girls’ classroom: the Queen adopting a ritual invented by another woman, me adopting a ritual reserved for girls. All of us, in our own ways, slipping into rooms where we weren’t expected.
The earliest sponges were often just jam. No cream. The Women’s Institute still insists on jam only, because cream is too unstable for judging tables. My cookery teacher would have nodded and turned it into a threat.
And before baking powder, making a sponge was an athletic event – eggs beaten by hand for up to an hour. The Victoria sponge as we know it only exists because Alfred Bird invented baking powder in 1843 so his wife, allergic to yeast and eggs, could enjoy raised breads. A love story disguised as chemistry. I like that. It makes the cake feel less like a rulebook and more like an act of care.
By the mid‑19th century, the sponge was a symbol of middle‑class respectability. A neat, well‑risen sponge at afternoon tea meant refinement, leisure, aspiration. Working‑class families made heavier cakes; the sponge was a social climber. I didn’t know any of this at thirteen, but I understood instinctively that the cake mattered. That it meant something. That it was a test — not of baking, but of belonging.
Decades later, a Dutch baker – the first winner of Heel Holland Bakt — wrote, “Put it all in a bowl, mix it, put it in the oven.” And what do you know. It worked. If only I could go back to 1967 and whisper to that teacher, “The constituency is far easier to achieve than they’d have you believe, Miss.”
Looking back, I realise that what I was doing in that classroom wasn’t just baking. I was testing the boundaries of who I was allowed to be. The Victoria sponge, with all its rules and rituals, was the perfect symbol of the world I grew up in: polite, rigid, convinced of its own correctness.
And yet – like the Dutch baker said – you can just put everything in a bowl and mix it.
Sometimes the simplest method is the truest rebellion.
Queer After Everything 