In these times when people might want to cheer themselves up with an indulgent cake but there are no eggs available, this plant-based, chocolatey Victoria sponge is a great substitute and easy to make. It’s a recipe I use all the time and, although you can jazz it up by adding your favourite extra ingredients, it works well without the chocolate as a vanilla sponge. It also makes a really good birthday cake.

First of all, you need two mixing bowls. In a large one put 500 grams of plain flour, a teaspoonful of baking powder, a teaspoonful of bicarb, 350  grams of sugar, a pinch of salt and two tablespoons of good drinking chocolate or cocoa. In the other bowl, put 300 millilitres of oil (I use a mix of olive and sunflower), a big teaspoon of vanilla paste, two tablespoons of cider vinegar, 400 millilitres of plant milk (I use oat) and whisk it all together.

Pour the liquid into the dry ingredients and mix together. Add a little more milk if the mixture is too stiff: it should look like any other unctuous cake batter. Divide the mixture between two sandwich cake tins. Bake the cakes in a 180* oven for thirty minutes or maybe a little longer, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Leave to cool.

Level the cake off so it sits up straight on a plate. (I’d use the spare sponge bits to make plant-based tiramisu… soaked in Kahlua.)  Sandwich the cake with buttercream and red jam – cherry, raspberry, whatever you like. The buttercream is made from three tablespoons of plant butter, mixing icing sugar in bit by bit until it is the right consistency to be thick and spreadable. Add vanilla paste to it if you like and a pinch of salt.

Cover the top of the cake as you please – a dredging of icing sugar, raspberries. My favourite covering is to make a ganache by melting a big bar and a half of good plant-based chocolate, letting it cool a bit and mixing into it three good tablespoons of coconut cream from a tin, ideally left in the fridge overnight so that the coconut cream is super thick. You can use the rest for a Thai green curry, a satay or a chickpea and butternut squash madras. If it’s bitter chocolate, you may want to add a dash of maple syrup.

Once the topping has set, after about half an hour, you’re ready to dive in and devour it! It’s a huge cake, it will feed a dozen people. It should last in a cake tin for a week or, if you prefer, it will do for one or two cake-starved bookworms for a couple of days, or perhaps just one extra-indulgent evening!