Paola Thomas

A simple yet festive chocolate cake you can use for birthdays or just serve as a luxurious after-dinner dessert.

Before the Victoria sponge, British sponge cakes were leavened only by eggs hand-whisked with sugar until foamy and thick. Sometime in the mid-1800s, an unheralded genius realized that the recent invention of baking powder meant butter could be creamed in with the sugar, resulting in a firmer, longer-lasting, less temperamental sponge. And that’s how we ended up with cake we know today: a toothsome, bouncy sponge that is comparatively easy to whip up and has a rich, buttery flavor.

Between the rich coffee essence and toasty walnut flavor, this sophisticated layer cake is what to turn to when a celebration is in order.

A lemon drizzle cake is more of a concept than an actual recipe. Although there is a time and a place for Madeira-type plain lemon sponge, sometimes just a bit more pizzazz and sugar is required. A drizzle cake is just a lemon sponge cake that’s soaked while still warm with a glaze made of lemon juice and sugar, which adds a crisp crust as it cools.

A Madeira cake is the sort of plain cake that looks like it might be dull and dry, but instead turns out to be exceptionally moreish.

With a history going back to the Middle Ages, and traditionally served as an accompaniment to fowl of all kinds — chicken, turkey, and game birds — bread sauce is to a British Christmas dinner what a green bean casserole is to an American Thanksgiving.