Everytime I find a great recipe for my bakes, I always try to look for ways I can do with minimum changes to it that for an alternative in its flavour profile or texture. In this post, I will be sharing with you my go to soft sponge cake recipe that I use alot for most type of Asian style cakes. You will also see how easy it is to make the variations with just a small change and addition of a single ingredient. If you have tried them, you pretty much can create more varieties to your liking, such as adding in powdered sesames, hazelnut paste, chestnut powder and so much more!
To go straight to making the basic Vanilla, Chocolate and Green Tea Soft Sponge Cake, you can head right to the RECIPE section or read on for more tips!
WHAT IS A SPONGE CAKE?
Sponge cake refers to cakes that are light and airy in texture. A typical sponge cake recipe will consist of flour, sugar, eggs and some type of fat (butter or vegetable oil).
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SPONGE CAKE AND REGULAR CAKES
The main characteristics that seperates a sponge and regular cakes is the ratio of eggs and fat used in the recipe.
Sponge cake often consist of more eggs than fat in comparison to regular cakes and are made from folding in the melted / liquid fat and flour into the foamed eggs (eggs that has been whisked until they are light and airy). A sponge cake can be made from whole eggs or egg whites.
A regular cakes on the other hand are often made by "creaming" the butter with the sugar to aerate the butter before adding in the eggs and dry ingredients. The result of a regular cakes are slightly denser that a sponge cake and is less delicate. A regular cake can be light and delicate too depending on the technique and recipe you use, although impossible to be as light as a sponge.
TIPS IN MAKING THIS SOFT AND LIGHT SPONGE CAKE
Invest in a non non-stick baking tin
Prior to preparing the sponge cake, ensure that you have a non non-stick baking tin available. For the recipe below, it will fit TWO x 15cm diameter x 6.5cm depth removable base baking tin.
As the cake is light and delicate, a non-stick baking tin can cause the cake to shrink inwards upon cooling.
Bring all ingredients to room temperature
When it comes to making a sponge cake, it is recommended to always bring your ingredients to room temperature.
A room temperature eggs will whip better when they are not too cold. The milk in the recipe is also gently warmed to aroung 60°C before whisking in with the oil. I have tried making the sponge with cold milk and oil, and it seems to be working fine, but if you choose to substitute the oil for butter, it is important to ensure that the milk is not too cold so as not to set the butter too much.
Use cream of tartar or vinegar if you are using older eggs
When baking anything that heavily relies on the egg whites foam, it is always a good idea to be cautious that the egg whites are stable when being whipped. Fresh egg whites tend to be more stable to whip as the protein are still tightly bonded together, which is what helps hold on to air when whisked. Older egg whites tends to run thinner as the bond between the protein starts to weaken and become alkaline, making it quick to aerate but weaker in stability (can collapse more easily).
Unless if you are working in a farm or knows your local grocer, it is hard to know if you have bought fresh eggs out from ther shelf. But it is easy to tell by craking one open as older eggs end to be runnier. Another thing you could do is by gently dropping an egg in a tall glass filled with water. If the egg sinks, it is fresh but if it floats, you know it is old. This is due to the egg shrinking on the inside, which leaves an air pocket causing it to float.
In order to strengten an older egg whites, you can simply neutralise the egg whites by adding something acidic, such as lemon juice, vinegar or cream of tartar. Since Cream of Tartar is something I find quite accessible here in Australia, it has always been my option. For every 30ml of egg whites (from 1 medium size egg), you will only need approximately 1/8 of a teaspoon.
Use a low protein wheat flour.
Since this sponge contains a high amount of air foam, to give it more structure when baked, a larger amount of flour is needed. In this case, I always opt for a cake flour, or sometimes also referred to as high-ratio flour. Cake flour is different to plain flour, as many often mistake them. Plain flour contains approximately 8-10% protein whereas cake flour are slightly more delicate with approximately 6-8% protein content. The percentage differes depending on where it is made and what brand you are using.
The lower protein means that the flour has a lesser chance of developing too much gluten, which is often what makes cakes tough.
Sift the dry ingredients when folding them through the egg foam.
When folding in the dry ingredients into the egg foam, it is important to sift them on top of the egg foam in increments, gently folding them each time. If you add too much dry ingredients too fast, they can become too heavy for the egg foam and ultimately collapse the air pockets and sink to the bottom, which compromises the lightness of the sponge cake.
If you do not sift the dry ingredients when adding into the egg foam, this can create lumps, making it hard to fold through and chances are you will fold them through more than needed trying to break up the lumps, which can dissipate the air in the foam too much, giving you dense mixture.
WHY IS THE STABILITY OF AN EGG WHITE IMPORTANT WHEN MAKING SPONGE CAKE?
If the egg whites are old, this means that the protein bonds are weak. If the protein bonds are weak, it lacks the ability to hold on to air when whisked. This ultimately means that upon handling and baking, it has a tendency to collapse or shrink upon colling.
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RECIPE
VANILLA SPONGE CAKE
Equipment: 2 x (15cm diameter x 6.5cm depth) removable base cake pan (The cake pan needs to be the non non-stick type)
NOTE: This recipe makes two sponge cakes. I often like to make one extra sponge cake to reserve for later use. Since you are going through all the effort of making them, it never hurts to make some extra to save time for the future :)
INGREDIENT | QUANTITY |
Egg Whites | 180g |
Cream of tartar | pinch |
Caster Sugar | 180g |
Egg Yolks | 120g |
Cake Flour | 180g |
Baking Powder | ½ teaspoon |
TO MAKE THE VANILLA SPONGE CAKE
Pre heat the oven to 170˚C.
Place the room temperature egg whites and cream of tartar in a stand mixer bowl fitted with a whisk attachment and whisk on medium speed until soft peak and there are no liquid egg whites remaining.
Stream in the caster sugar while continuously whisking. Once all the sugar has been added, increase the speed to high and continue whisking until you achieve a stiff peak.
Add the egg yolks in the meringue and whisk to combine. Once you can drop and 8 figure with the cake batter on top without it disappearing for 5 seconds, the batter is well whipped and ready for the next step.
Mix the cake flour and baking powder together in a bowl. In seperate additions, sift in the dry mixture over the top of the egg foam and gently fold through. Continue with more sifted flour and fold until you have added all of the rest of the dry ingredients.
Note: It is important to not add too much dry ingredients each time to prevent them from sinking in and collapse the air in the egg mixture. Gently fold through without being too vigorous will ensure that your sponge cake is light and fluffy. Take your time and be gentle with the mix.
In a seperate bowl, mix the room temperature milk and oil together. Scoop our a generous amout of the foam mixture into the liquid and gently stir. Add more foam mixture if needed until the liquid base is a similar lightness with the foam mixture. Add in the foamed liquid mixture back into the egg base and gently fold again until they are well mixted through.
Note: The liquid base needs to be the same lightness to the egg foam base otherwise they can be too heavy and when added back to the egg foam base, can collapse all the air pockets and cause the base to be overly dense after baking.
Transfer the sponge mix into two seprate removable base cake tin, approximately 330g each pan.
Place the cake tin onto a baking tray and bake at the lowest part of your home oven for approximately 35 minutes or until when tested with a skewer, it comes out clean.
Once bake, drop each cake tin down gently to tap the cake down to prevent excessive shrinkage. Then, turn the cake upside down over a wire rack to cool completely.
Once cooled, run a sharp pairing knife on the edges to realease the cake, gently pull the base off from the cake.
Wrap each sponge cake in cling wrap to prevent from drying out.
You can either reserve them at room temperature for up to 2 days or freeze them for future use.
The sponge cake will last up to 3 months in the freezer.
CHOCOLATE SPONGE CAKE
To make a substitution for the Chocolate Sponge, simply take out 20g of the cake flour and substitute it with the same amount of cocoa powder. If you are using natural cocoa powder that has not been processed, you will need to substitute the baking powder with bi-carbonate soda instead. Alkalized cocoa powder are cocoa powder that has been processed slightly, which in the process neutralizes the acidity in natural cocoa powder.
Do you know?
Natural Cocoa powder naturally has acidity in them which is one of the factors in conjucntion with heat that activates bi-carbonate soda, and since baking powder consist of added acidity in them already, this can cause the cake mixture to activate too much. If this is the case, you will need to substitute the baking powder with Bi-carbonate powder. All you need to do is divide the amount of baking powder by 3 since bi-carbonate powder are much active than baking powder. Therefore, ½ teaspoon of baking powder in the recipe is approximately 1/6 of a teaspoon of bi-carbonate soda.
Equipment: 2 x (15cm diameter x 6.5cm depth) removable base cake pan (The cake pan needs to be the non non-stick type)
NOTE: This recipe makes two sponge cakes.
INGREDIENT | QUANTITY |
Egg Whites | 180g |
Cream of tartar | pinch |
Caster Sugar | 180g |
Egg Yolks | 120g |
Cake Flour | 160g |
Alkalized Cocoa Powder | 20g |
Baking Powder | ½ teaspoon |
Green Tea Sponge Cake
The green tea version sponge is the same as you would do for chocolate sponge, just substitute 20g of the cake flour with good quality green tea powder.
Equipment: 2 x (15cm diameter x 6.5cm depth) removable base cake pan (The cake pan needs to be the non non-stick type)
NOTE: This recipe makes two sponge cakes.
INGREDIENT | QUANTITY |
Egg Whites | 180g |
Cream of tartar | pinch |
Caster Sugar | 180g |
Egg Yolks | 120g |
Cake Flour | 160g |
Green Tea Powder | 20g |
Baking Powder | ½ teaspoon |
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