I tried making sponge cakes for a while before I got them right. I was following recipes by big-name cooks, but they all failed so much that I feared if I dropped one of the cakes on the floor it would leave a big hole in the timber.
Turns out that, just like contestants on national cooking shows don't always know how to cook the old-fashioned things, famous cooks don't always get a recipe perfect either.
The secret ingredient to a sponge cake is cornflour. Without that, mine are always hard as a rock. But this one, which I just grabbed from a quick internet search and have made perfectly without fail ever since, is lovely.
Sponge Cake
1/3 cup cornflour
1/3 cup plain flour
1/3 cup self-raising flour
¼ teaspoon salt
4 x 60g eggs, at room temperature
2/3 cup caster sugar
- Preheat oven to 180°C.
- Grease 2 x deep, 20cm round cake tins and line bases with baking paper.
- Using an electric mixer, beat eggs and sugar in a large bowl on medium-high speed for 6 minutes, or until mixture is thick, pale and tripled in volume.
- Sift flours and salt together three times to aerate.
- Gradually sift flour mixture over egg mixture while simultaneously folding in with a large metal spoon until just combined.
- Divide mixture between prepared tins. To level batter, gently spin tins on kitchen counter.
- Bake for 20 minutes, or until cakes have shrunk away from the sides slightly and spring back when gently touched.
- Turn out on to baking paper-lined wire racks. Carefully peel away baking paper, then leave to cool.
- Spread jam (preferably homemade!) and whipped cream on the bottom of one cake, place the other on top - and serve!
Enjoy!
6 comments:
My recipe is very similar, but has no salt and no self-raising flour.
Here it is:
4 eggs, separated
4oz caster sugar
2oz plain flour
2oz cornflour
2 tsp baking powder
few drops angostura bitters-optional
set oven at 200*
grease and flour cake tin
sift flours and baking powder
beat egg whites until stiff
gradually beat in sugar
when sugar is dissolved, beat in egg yolks
gradually beat in flour mix
pour into tin
bake until cake begins to shrink from sides of tin
loosen with plastic spatula. cool on wire cake rack.
P.S. way back in my high school years, in home economics class, we were taught a sponge cake recipe that involved melted butter and boiling water. They never did turn out like cakes, more like spare tyres. Ugh!
Mmmm, sweet simplicity- you've now got me itching to bake.
You know, I have never ever made a sponge cake! This looks delicious though - thanks for the tip. You have PPMJ itching to bake and me itching to eat!
Gill xo
Oh yum! I haven't made a sponge cake since home ec 16 years ago!
I'll save that recipe to my favourites for when I get up the courage to try again. :D
Yummmmm...
You know, I have not baked a sponge cake since high school. Seriously. And in high school, I made the best, HIGHEST sponge cake ever! I rubbed my sister's nose in it, cos apparently hers was as flat as a pancake when she was in high school. *evil laugh* (She was a good sport about it.)
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