Bad Mix or Bad Cook?

When baking a cake, I'd normally start from scratch using all the different ingredients, but when I saw a Victoria sponge cake mix in Tesco for 49p I thought that it'd probably be cheaper and easier than buying the ingredients I needed separately! All you need are two eggs and some water.

I really wanted it to work! I baked it this morning for my Dad's birthday meal this evening. I used exactly the right size tins and the right amount of eggs, but when I put the mix into the tins it barely covered the bottom! I assumed they must have some amazing raising ingredient in there to poof it up a bit! I think my problem was that I didn't have an electric whisk, so perhaps my mixture wasn't as airy as it should've been but I did try to compensate with lots of floofing-up hand maneuvers!

Sadly, when I pulled it out of the oven after 15 minutes, the cake layers were only about a centimetre thick! It's probably mostly my fault, but I now have an inch thick cake instead of a lovely voluminous sponge! The cake is still fairly airy and light, just... thin! It is also, having tried a crumb, pretty darn tasteless compared to other sponges I've made myself. 

 

The cake was my responsibility so it's off to find some more ingredients, or maybe just a ready-made cake that I can't mess up!!

Happy birthday to you,

Sorry your birthday cake is poo,

I'll do better next year,

Happy birthday to you!