Dr Liz Rylott’s End-of-term Victoria Sponge 

(AKA ‘Photosynthesis Cake’) recipe

• Weight 4 eggs (without shells; can scale cake size up/down with more/less eggs).

• Weigh same amount in sugar, butter and self-raising flour (or plain flour with ~1 heaped teaspoon of baking powder).

• Beat the sugar and butter together.

• Gradually mix in alternate portions of flour and egg.

• If you have any, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence.

• When all ingredients have been combined, pour mixture into two circular tins (or anything oven-proof that will hold the volume).

• Bake until the sponge surface springs back when pressed.

• Cool the sponges.

• To make the buttercream filling, mix together equal quantities of butter and icing sugar.

• Sandwich the sponges together with (ideally strawberry/raspberry) jam and buttercream.

• Eat :)

Photosynthesis-derived ingredients

a. Sugar: sucrose, photosynthetic output from sugar beet (Beta vulgaris), grown in Yorkshire.

b. Self-raising flour: Starch, the output of excess energy from photosynthesis by wheat (Triticum aestivum), grown in Yorkshire, plus raising agents (sodium bicarbonate and potassium hydrogen tartrate).

c. Butter – from milk from Yorkshire cows eating biomass of grass (most commonly Timothy grass Phleum pratense).

d. Eggs: from hens fed a mix of Yorkshire-grown plants: corn (Zea mays), oats (Avena sativa) and soybeans (Glycine max, OK these mostly imported from Americas), plus grit (Yorkshire limestone made from the calcium-containing shells of photosynthetic microalgae).