Sponge Cake Recipe Biography
Source(google.com.pk)Here's a quick and easy recipe using cupboard staples to make a sponge cake. Sponge cakes taste good eaten plain, served with sweetened fruit or iced with a simple glaze. Any way you make them, they are good eating.
It will spring back and look golden. Bake for a few more minutes, if the cake is not done.
Grease and line 2 x 20cm/8in sandwich tins: use a piece of baking or silicone paper to rub a little baking spread or butter around the inside of the tins until the sides and base are lightly coated. Line the bottom of the tins with a circle of baking or silicone paper (to do this, draw around the base of the tin onto the paper and cut out)
Break the eggs into a large mixing bowl, then add the sugar, flour, baking powder and baking spread.
Mix everything together until well combined. The easiest way to do this is with an electric hand mixer, but you can use a wooden spoon. Put a damp cloth under your bowl when you’re mixing to stop it moving around. Be careful not to over-mix – as soon as everything is blended you should stop. The finished mixture should be of a soft ‘dropping’ consistency – it should fall off a spoon easily.
Divide the mixture evenly between the tins: this doesn’t need to be exact, but you can weigh the filled tins if you want to check. Use a spatula to remove all of the mixture from the bowl and gently smooth the surface of the cakes.
Place the tins on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 25 minutes. Don't be tempted to open the door while they're cooking, but after 20 minutes do look through the door to check them.
The cakes are done when they’re golden-brown and coming away from the edge of the tins. Press them gently to check – they should be springy to the touch. Remove them from the oven and set aside to cool in their tins for five minutes. Then run a palette or rounded butter knife around the inside edge of the tin and carefully turn the cakes out onto a cooling rack.
Technique: Testing to see if a cake is cooked
Testing to see if a cake is cooked
Watch technique
0:29 mins
To take your cakes out of the tins without leaving a wire rack mark on the top, put the clean tea towel over the tin, put your hand onto the tea towel and turn the tin upside-down. The cake should come out onto your hand and the tea towel – then you can turn it from your hand onto the wire rack.
Technique: Removing cakes from a cake tin
Removing cakes from a cake tin
Watch technique
0:32 mins
Set aside to cool completely.
To assemble the cake, place one cake upside down onto a plate and spread it with plenty of jam. If you want to, you can spread over whipped cream too.
Top with the second cake, top-side up. Sprinkle over the caster sugar
Sponge cake is the most commonly recognised variety of baked confectionery in Britain. It has a sweet taste, often flavoured with vanilla, chocolate or other additions, and can be cut and displayed in a number of different way
An easier version of this recipe is available that does not require a kitchen scale.
sodium bicarbonate (2tsp) (baking powder, baking soda or bicarbonate of soda)
hoose one of these to spread between two cakes if making a cake with more than two eggs.
2-4 tbsp jam (softened with pallette knife or similar) or
buttercream (cream together 100g caster sugar and 100g butter)
Cream together the sugar and butter in the mixing bowl. They should achieve a creamy texture with quite a thick consistency. The longer, harder and faster the butter and sugar are creamed the lighter the cake will be when cooked.
Add both eggs and mix well.
Add all the flour and mix well.
Add any food colouring, flavouring, etc. at this point. If you add liquid ingredients, add the same volume again of sugar and flour mix to compensate. If adding dry ingredients, ensure to use 3g less flour for every 4g of extra dry ingredients added.
Beat with wooden spoon in a circular motion, trying to incorporate as much air as possible.
Grease one or two cake tins with butter.
Spoon, then scrape, as much cake mixture as possible into the tins. If using two tins, try to ensure that each tin contains an equal amount of cake mixture and is not more than 3/4 filled.
Put the tins into the oven and leave them for approximately 10 minutes before checking them. The cooking time should reach around 15 minutes: keep checking them regularly after about 8 minutes since all ovens vary.
Turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool.
When cool, dredge with sugar using a spoon.
Two or more cakes edit
Turn the cakes out onto a wire rack to cool.
When cool, turn one of them upside down and spread your filling onto it.
Place the other cake (top up) onto the upside-down cake and dredge the cake with sugar using a spoon.
Heat oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5. Butter two 20cm sandwich tins and line with non-stick baking paper. In a large bowl, beat all the cake ingredients together until you have a smooth, soft batter.
Divide the mixture between the tins, smooth the surface with a spatula or the back of a spoon, then bake for about 20 mins until golden and the cake springs back when pressed. Turn onto a cooling rack and leave to cool completely.
To make the filling, beat the butter until smooth and creamy, then gradually beat in icing sugar. Beat in vanilla extract if you’re using it. Spread the butter cream over the bottom of one of the sponges, top it with jam and sandwich the second sponge on top. Dust with a little icing sugar before serving. Keep in an airtight container and eat within 2 days.
200g caster sugar
200g softened butter
4 eggs, beaten
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp milk
For the filling
100g butter, softened
140g icing sugar, sifted
drop vanilla extract optional
340g jar good-quality strawberry jam we used Tiptree Little Scarlet
icing sugar, to decorate
t took the invention of baking powder to make such rich, buttery cakes possible. Since then the British have had plenty of time to perfect it
t may not be fancy or fashionable, but I would be hard pressed to think of a cake I liked better than the simple Victoria sandwich. Coffee and walnut, or a damp, whisky-sodden fruited number might come close, but johnny-come-latelys such as the cheesecake or "death by chocolate" could never hope to compete with the quiet charms of this fete favourite. The Victoria sponge* didn't always keep such a low profile, however: once upon a time, old faithful sat proudly at the culinary cutting edge, because it took the invention of baking powder in the 1840s to make such rich, buttery cakes even possible, let alone popular. The sweet-toothed British celebrated this truly world-changing moment with a gloriously patriotic recipe (although anyone who attempted to follow Mrs Beeton's first version would have been left rather underwhelmed by its royal seal of approval, because the original domestic goddess/canny plagiarist left out the eggs).
No matter, because in the subsequent century and a half, we've had plenty of time to perfect it. Indeed, the Women's Institute (WI) has elevated Victoria sandwich-making to an art form: a rosette can be won or lost with a wantonly loose crumb, or the application of the wrong sort of jam. To be honest, though, I'm not too bothered about winning any prizes – a truly great cake is reward enough as far as I'm concerned.
* Strictly speaking, panino pedants, this popular name is a misnomer, because a true sponge, of the kind used in swiss rolls, is made from a whisked mixture of eggs, sugar and flour.
As the miracle without which there would be no Victoria sandwich, it stands to reason that baking powder must be the most important ingredient. Indeed, so vital is it in this recipe that almost everyone opts for self-raising flour, which comes ready fortified with baking powder, apart from east London baker Lily Vanilli, who compensates by adding a whopping 1.5tbsp of baking powder to her plain flour instead.
Joanne Wheatley, past winner of the Great British Bake Off, and author of Home Baking, even tops up her self-raising flour with extra baking powder, as do the twin deities of Delia Smith and Nigella Lawson. I'd hardly dare argue with that lot, so fortunately, though such supplements are not sanctioned by the official WI version, I reckon they know whereof they speak: it makes the cakes even fluffier.
Lawson also uses a small proportion of cornflour along with her self-raising, which reduces the overall levels of gluten, and thus, in theory at least, makes for a softer result. To be honest, though her cake is lovely and light, I prefer a little more of a robust texture in my Victoria sponge: it shouldn't quite melt in the mouth; after all, that's what tea was invented for.
Although the Telegraph claims that Mary Berry believes margarine gives a lighter texture to cakes, she's certainly not admitting it in the Great British Bake Off book: indeed, everyone except Wheatley opts for butter instead. Although she adds an extra egg yolk for colour and richness, I miss the flavour of butter: with careful beating, and a little baking powder, heaviness shouldn't be a problem. That said, a little milk, as used by Lawson, helps bring the mixture to just the right dropping consistency – I find the WI's batter thick and difficult to spread evenly in the tins.
In one of two recipes for a Victoria sponge in her book, English Food, Jane Grigson melts the butter with water before adding it to the mixture, to create a "delicate, foolproof cake of the Genoise type" that she credits to the West Sussex Women's Institute. Foolproof it may be, but mine's oddly flat and, though undeniably light, rather chewy, like a boudoir biscuit.
Vanilli's method is yet more unusual: she mixes the butter and flour first, coating the flour with fat, "which inhibits the development of gluten and produces a very soft crumb" – hence, presumably, the amount of baking powder. Her cake is indeed pillowy, but, though light it seems off-puttingly dense and moist, more like an American cake or even a muffin than a Victoria sponge.
Smith and Wheatley both go for the gratifyingly quick all-in-one method, where the ingredients are simply beaten together and baked, rather than the traditional sequence of beating together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, and then gradually introducing the eggs, and finally folding in the flour.
Annie Bell admits in her Baking Bible that she was once a fan of the easy version, but, after testing both it "unanimously came back that the whisked sponge was much lighter … the all-in-one was denser and chewier". Although, as Bell observes, I would scarcely have noticed the difference separately, when tasted side by side, the traditional method produces a distinctly less coarse, more delicate texture.
Rather than giving exact amounts, the WI weighs the eggs in their shells, then calculates the weight of the flour, butter and sugar accordingly. This seems an eminently sensible idea, given the remarkable variation even within boxes graded by size.
Vanilla extract is near ubiquitous here, with Vanilli in particular adding a huge amount, but I find it overpowering and sickly, so I'm going to side with the WI. I'm also with them on their caster sugar topping, which, unlike Lawson or Smith's prettier icing sugar, adds a satisfactory crunch to proceedings.
Though I love the seedy texture of raspberry jam ("homemade/good quality") I can't agree with the WI's spartan prohibition of any other filling. Like food writer Xanthe Clay, I think adding something creamy "rounds out the flavours". Though the poshest of cakes seem to use fresh whipped stuff (Jane Grigson in particular is very snooty about buttercream) and Smith goes for a highly suspect continental mixture of mascarpone and fromage frais, I've fallen in love with Vanilli's decadent buttercream. This I'll allow to have the merest nod of vanilla.
Smith and Lawson stuff the cakes with fresh berries, and Vanilli makes a fresh berry compote to replace the jam, but all that fanciness is a step too far. We are in Britain, after all.
Preheat the oven to 180C (350F/gas mark 4) and grease and base-line 2 x 21cm sandwich tins. Put the butter and sugar into a food mixer, or use a hand mixer to combine until light and really fluffy – this should take a good couple of minutes.
Scrape down the sides, beat the eggs together, then add them to the mixture a little at a time. Scrape the sides of the bowl down to make sure everything is mixed in properly.
Fold in the flour, baking powder and 1/2tsp salt, then add enough milk so that the mixture drops easily off a spoon, but does not run off. Divide evenly between the tins, smooth the top and put in the oven for 25-30 minutes until golden and well risen: a skewer inserted into the centre should come out clean.
Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then put, flat-side down, on a wire rack to cool completely. Meanwhile, make the buttercream by beating the butter until light and fluffy, then adding the sugar and cream and a pinch of salt. Beat together well, then set aside until the cake is cool.
To assemble the cake, put the least favoured cake, whichever it is, on to a plate or stand, and spread generously with jam. Top with a layer of buttercream, then add the second cake, flat-side down. Dust the top with caster sugar, and devour.
Is the Victoria sandwich the unsung hero of our teatime repertoire, or does it deserve its dull reputation? Have you ever won a prize for yours, and which other old-fashioned cakes would you revive given half the chaTo assemble the cake, put the least favoured cake, whichever it is, on to a plate or stand, and spread generously with jam. Top with a layer of buttercream, then add the second cake, flat-side down. Dust the top with caster sugar, and devour.
Is the Victoria sandwich the unsung hero of our teatime repertoire, or does it deserve its dull reputation? Have you ever won a prize for yours, and which other old-fashioned cakes would you revive given half the chance My vote's for seed cake: it always sounded so very jolly in Enid Blyton's fabulous midnight feasts.
This article was amended on 4 August 2014 to replace 1tsp salt with a generous pinch
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