Don't Sweat the Aubergine

stirring all the time, above the simmering water. After about 5 to 7 minutes, the mixture should start to thicken. Remove the bowl, and stand it in cold water; while the mixture still has some warmth, stir in the butter in small pieces. Allow the curd to cool before spreading it on the cake.
VICTORIA SPONGE
    The same ingredients as above, but, you’ll notice, in a different order. Creaming the butter and sugar before adding the egg and gently folding in the flour results in a cake that is lighter in gluten, and that therefore has a lighter texture. The drawback is that the air bubbles are more likely to burst in the less elastic batter, particularly if your mixture is too loose.
----
HOW TO MAKE IT
----
    100g caster sugar
    100g softened butter
    2 eggs, beaten
    1 tsp vanilla essence (optional)
    100g self-raising flour (or plain flour, plus 1 tsp baking powder)
    Preheat your oven to gas mark 4/180°C. Put in a baking sheet.
    Line and grease a 20cm springform cake tin. 2
    Cream the sugar and butter until the mixture is soft and fluffy. 3 Beat in about three-quarters of the egg – this may be enough. Add the vanilla, if you’re using it, and gently fold in the flour. You should have a gloopy batter, which will drop off a spoon, but reluctantly. If the batter is too stiff, gently add more egg. If it’s still too stiff, add a little milk.
    Tip the batter into the cake tin, spread it out and level the surface, and put the tin into the oven on top of the baking sheet, which helps to convey the heat. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until an inserted skewer emerges clean.
    Drop the cake tin from a height of about 30cm on to a hard surface. 7 Allow the cake to cool before turning it out. 8 I keep it in greaseproof paper, wrapped inside foil.
----
VARIATIONS
----
    See the suggestions for the basic sponge recipe, see here Here’s an extra one: lemon drizzle. Put the zest 9 and juice of 2 lemons in a bowl, and stir in 100g granulated sugar until dissolved. When you remove the cake from the oven, spoon this syrup all over it.
GENOESE SPONGE
    In this sponge, the eggs produce the foam – there is no other raising agent. A cake the size of the sponges described above would again have 100g flour and 100g sugar, but with 4 eggs, and 50g melted butter. You need an electric whisk to beat together the sugar and eggs; eventually, after a good 10 minutes and maybe more, they increase in volume by as much as six times, and become stiff and very pale. Then you fold in the flour. Last (because the fat collapses the air bubbles), you stir in the butter, quickly transfer the batter to the tin, and bake it as in the recipes above.
CHOCOLATE CAKE
    An alternative and easier way of creating an egg foam is to separate the eggs and beat the whites only. This cake is an Elizabeth David recipe, and is seductively moist and gooey. I recommend that you eat it all on the day you make it: by day two, it becomes somewhat compacted.
----
HOW TO MAKE IT
----
    84g butter
    100g caster sugar
    110g dark chocolate
    55g flour
    3 eggs, separated 5
    Elizabeth David recommends you use a 1 1/2 pint loaf tin. I have no idea how large that is. Mine is 7cm x 16.5cm, and seems to be roughly the right size. Line it and grease it. 2 Heat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C.
    Cream the butter and sugar. 3 (Elizabeth David does not include this instruction; but I have found that it produces a lighter cake.)
    Cut up the chocolate, and melt it in a bowl suspended above a pan of barely simmering water. This, I find, is the easiest way of ensuring you do not overheat the chocolate and turn it grainy. Remove it from the heat as soon as it melts, and stir into it the creamed butter and sugar, flour and egg yolks. (Or, if the chocolate bowl is not large enough, pour the chocolate into the bowl with the butter and sugar – but you’re bound to leave some chocolate behind.)
    Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. 6 Fold them into the chocolate mixture, gently turning and lifting until the mixture is amalgamated, but without beating the air bubbles from it.
    Pour the mixture into the tin, and bake on a baking sheet for 35 minutes, or until an inserted skewer emerges clean.
    Drop the cake tin from a height of about 30cm on to a hard surface. 7 Allow the cake to cool before turning it out. 8 You could keep it in greaseproof paper, wrapped inside foil; but, as I suggest above, you may prefer to eat it right away.
2 cakes without flour
    I have never succeeded in making a satisfactory