Victoria Sponge

Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Victoria Sponge Cake serves 6, £2.65
Very dainty, it looks cute. Well balanced ratio of sponge, jam and cream. Stronger jam, a good counterpoint.
★★★

Ocado More Food Victoria Sponge Cake
serves 4-5, £5.39
Cracked on top - this shouldn’t happen in Victoria sponge. The filling is near to non-existent. A shame - it’s the nicest sponge.
★★

Tesco Finest Victoria Sponge Cake
serves 6, £2.65
Looks the best when cut, it’s neatly spaced. A good base for trifle: very plain. The crumb is even, it feels commercial.
★

Asda Extra Special Hand Finished Victoria Sponge
serves 6, £2.65
Really tasteless sponge. The filling is ok… not enough jam. The sponge is very dry in texture.
★

Chocolate Cake

Ocado More Food Chocolate Fudge Cake
serves 4-5, £5.39
A lot of icing... The cake is OK-ish, but the icing tastes like chocolate spread. The best one, but still not very good.
★★★

Morrisons M Signature Decadent Belgian Chocolate Fudge Cake
serves 10, £3.99
In-your-face cocoa-powdery flavour. Looks moist, but bizarrely dry. I might eat it with a strong coffee
★★

Lidl Deluxe Hand Finished Chocolate Cake
serves 6, £1.89 So plain. It doesn’t taste that chocolatey, there’s no complexity. Moist, the crumb looks nice.
★

Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Belgian Chocolate Fudge Cake
serves 6, £2.65
The icing tastes a bit like chocolate, but without it, the cake would be very dry and very tasteless. ★

Lemon drizzle cake

Marks & Spencer Extremely Lemony Lemon Drizzle Cake
serves 10, £5
The cream has a good shot of lemon, but the sponge is dry and lacking in flavour. ★★

Tesco Finest Lemon Drizzle Cake
serves 6, £2.65
I’m not crazy about the cream inside - too fatty, but it’s keeping the cake moist. It’s not very lemony in taste.
★★

Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Lemon Drizzle Cake
serves 6, £2.65
Quite horrible. Doesn’t taste lemony at all. For me, too sweet. It’s dry and loose.
★

Waitrose Lemon Drizzle Cake
serves 8, £2.69
The icing is an atrocity - tastes like the sugar hasn’t been dissolved. It’s OK to eat, but to me that’s pound cake not lemon drizzle.
★

Carrot Cake

Tesco Finest Carrot Cake
serves 6, £2.65
Very cinnamony and moist. The icing isn’t too sweet. You can’t see much carrot inside. A very decent cake, worth having a slice.
★★★★

Asda Extra Special Hand Finished Carrot Cake
serves 6, £2.65
Icing looks shabby - slapdash. Quite dense inside (a good thing) and treacly. Fine texture and crumb, the flavour is OK.
★★★

Aldi Specially Selected Luxury Carrot Cake
serves 6, £1.79 each
A nice spice aroma. The icing has a sharpness. Smells better than it tastes.
★★

The Co-operative Truly Irresistible Carrot Cake
serves 6, £2.75
Looks horrible. Tastes like a dry pound ginger cake, not a moist vegetable cake. I would say that’s about 1% carrot.
★

Ginger cake

Daylesford Sticky Ginger Cake: best buy
serves 6-8, £7.49
Mahogany coloured... tempting. Quite an amazing amount of ginger in here. If anything, very slightly underdone. The winner.
★★★★

Waitrose Stem Ginger Loaf Cake
serves 6, £2.50
Looks like it has a skin condition - the sugar crystals are not appetising. Good ginger flavour, but the crumb is dry. It’s over-baked for me.
★★★

The Co-operative Truly Irresistible Ginger Loaf Cake
serves 6, £2.29
A bit flavourless, not very gingery. There are a couple of big clumps of flour in the mix – sloppily done.
★★

Betty’s Stem Ginger Cake
serves 6-8, £4.95
The icing shouldn’t be there - it’s against the whole point of the cake. Weird - a very mealy texture... like ground almonds. Too much going on.
★

Vanilla cheesecake

The Co-operative Loved by us New York Vanilla Cheesecake
serves 6, £3.29
The best flavour - it tastes a bit cheesy… not very sweet. Good texture - smooth, but substantial. Overall: an OK cake.
★★★

Morrisons M Signature New York Vanilla Cheesecake serves 6, £3.99, morrisons.com It doesn’t taste like much. The biscuit base is not very nice - thick, bland and slightly stale.
★★

Marks & Spencer New York Cheesecake
serves 6, £4
You can see the vanilla, but you can’t taste it. They’ve probably whipped it a lot - it’s very light… but that’s also made it watery. No tang.
★★

Lidl Deluxe New York Vanilla Cheesecake
serves 6, £2.99
Beyond horrible - vile. It’s got no tang and no vanilla flavour. Like eating unsalted butter that has sat by the window for a while.
NO STARS