SPONGE CAKE

WHAT IS SPONGE CAKE?

Have you ever made a sponge cake? For you will at least once! You probably don’t know it, but the sponge cake and cupcakes are part of a larger family in pastry called Whipped Cakes.

Sponge Cake is called so because of its foamy structure prepared with eggs, sugar, and flour, to which you can add some fat that helps make the final product finer. Butter is undoubtedly the most common fat used in the preparation of whipped masses such as cupcakes!

Like all the whipped cakes, sponge cake is characterized by a high air content, responsible for its light and fluffy structure. The element that allows the sponge cake to incorporate air is the egg itself, thanks to its proteins (the egg white and the yolk), which can form many air bubbles.

So let’s get to know the sponge cake better and find out:

• How to balance the Sponge Cake’s Recipe
• Techniques
• Additional Ingredients
• How to Store Sponge Cake

LET’S PLAY WITH THE SPONGE CAKE RECIPE

In sponge cake, the egg is our unit of measure for the proportions between ingredients. The recipe is simple because it consists of only three elements: eggs, sugar, and flour.

It is crucial to use a good quality flour with low protein content (W about 130-150 if you live in Europe, or an All-Purpose Flour if you are in the US). However, if you only have strong flour (such as bread flour), you can replace 10% of its weight with potato starch to limit the formation of gluten. We are quite lucky for the sponge cake because most of the flours on sale in supermarkets are low in proteins. Let’s make sure, however, that it is of good quality and contains nothing but flour (e.g., no baking soda)

In the recipes below, the measurement unit is 50gr, the regular egg’s average weight. However, I recommend weighing the eggs because their weight can differ significantly depending on the size you buy.

LIGHT SPONGE CAKE

It has a very honeycombed structure.

• Eggs 50gr
• Granulated Sugar 20gr
• Flour 20gr

MEDIUM SPONGE CAKE

Good quality sponge cake suitable for being soaked

• Eggs 50gr
• Granulated Sugar 35gr
• Flour 35gr

HEAVY SPONGE CAKE

It has a very compact structure and is suitable to be “shaped” like Anglo-Saxon cakes.

• Eggs 50gr
• Granulated Sugar 50gr
• Flour 50gr

ROLLED SPONGE CAKE

It has a flexible structure suitable for being rolled up.

• Eggs 50gr
• Sugar 35gr
• Inverted sugar or honey 10gr
• Flour 30gr

In this recipe, we can find around 30% more sugar than the average recipe. If you notice, that’s a special sugar, called Inverted Sugar (such as honey), which can retain the humidity of the product and give it more color during baking.

DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES TO MAKE SPONGE CAKE

We can prepare Sponge cake by whipping the whole egg or yolk and egg white separately. The choice of the two methods also depends on the structure you want to obtain. A greater volume of air in the dough translates, in fact, in a more incredible lightness in the baked sponge cake.

There are four different techniques of making sponge cake: 2 WARM and 2 COLD.

1. WARM METHOD: Very light and honeycombed structure, but it will tend to dry out sooner

Bring sugar and eggs to 50°C (122°F), stirring constantly. Then whip at medium speed in a stand mixer with a whisk (or with electric whips) until the mixture is puffy and bubbly. Finally, add the flour sifted twice. Once ready, pour the mixture into a buttered and floured mold and bake in a static oven at 180-190 °C (356°F – 374°F), keeping the oven door slightly ajar during the last 10min of cooking.

This sponge cake develops a high volume while whipped, but it raises too much in the oven. Its honeycombed structure makes it unsuitable if you want to soak it with liquor or syrup.

2. “MARGHERITA” METHOD: This is an Italian technique where we add some melted butter to obtain a more crumbly and delicate structure and a smaller alveolation. 

Heat the sugar and the eggs at 50°C (122°F) and whip them in a stand mixer or using electric whips. When the mixture is bubbly, add some of the sifted flour (about 90% of the recipe quantity). To better amalgamate the butter and not get the dough collapsed, I suggest taking a small part of the mixture (about 10%) and separately adding the melted butter and the remaining flour. Once the mixture is homogeneous, you can pour it into the dough, mixing from the bottom up. For baking it, you can proceed as above.

3. COLD METHOD: Finer and more compact structure, suitable for being soaked or rolled cakes.

Whip the sugar and eggs in a stand mixer (or with electric whips) until they reach about five times the initial volume. Then add the flour sifted twice and any flavorings (vanilla extract, lemon zest, etc.). Pour the mixture into a buttered and floured mold and bake as above.

4. DOUBLE METHOD: Very honeycombed and light structure like charlotte or Italian Savoiardi.

Whip the egg yolks with 2/3 of the sugar and separately, the egg whites with the remaining sugar. When the two compounds are ready, incorporate the meringue (whites egg) into the yolks, alternating with flour and mixing from the bottom up. For simplicity’s sake, you can start by adding a portion of the flour (about 1/4) into the yolks, mix it all and then add a portion of meringue, stirring from the bottom up. When the mixture is well blended, repeat the operation until you finish the flour and meringue (I recommend doing this four times). 

ADDITIONAL INGREDIENTS

Starches: The use of starches hinders the formation of gluten and allows you to get a more crumbly texture. For reference, you can substitute up to 50% flour with starches (potato starch or rice starch).

Dried Fruit in Flour: In addition to characterizing the sponge cake’s taste, excessive use of dried fruit may dry the cake. To limit this inconvenience, you can replace 50gr of flour with 150gr of dried fruit in flour.

Butter: As seen before, the butter enhances a crumbly and dense structure. However, butter must not exceed 50% of sugar’s weight to avoid the mass losing its structure. 

Yolks: For a more refined structure, you can add yolks to the recipe’s eggs, up to add 1/3 of the weight of whole eggs (if the recipe requires 300gr of whole eggs, you can add up to 100gr of yolks). You can let the whole eggs whip in the stand mixer and add the yolks after about 10 minutes.

Cocoa & Chocolate: To prepare an excellent chocolate sponge cake, add

Cocoa: Replace 100gr of flour with 10gr of cocoa carefully sifted

Melted chocolate: Replace 100gr of flour with 200gr of melted chocolate. First, create a mixture with whipped eggs (eggs + sugar), warm chocolate, and flour. When all the ingredients are well blended, add them to the sponge cake dough. In this case, I also recommend you add a small amount of honey to the recipes, which will prevent the chocolate or cocoa from drying out the sponge cake too much.

STORAGE

Once baked, you can freeze the sponge cake. Wrap it into plastic sheets, place it into food-grade plastic bags, or store it at +4°C (39°F) for ten days well covered.