Sponge Cakes are made of wheat flour, sugar, eggs and they derive their structure from egg foam into which the other ingredients are folded. The sponge cake is the first of the non-yeasted cakes. It is quite popular at Passovers and most families have at least one recipe passed down generations referred to as the Passover Sponge Cake.
References to earliest sponge cake recipes are found in Lydia Maria Child's The American Frugal Housewife, indicating that sponge cakes were well established by the early 19th century. The Victoria sponge cake was named after Queen Victoria, who favored a slice of the sponge cake with her afternoon tea.
A typical sponge cake is made by beating the eggs with sugar until they get light and creamy. This is carefully folded in the sieved flour using air incorporated into the egg mixture and denaturing of the egg proteins for thermal expansion that provides leavening. Sometimes yolks are beaten with the sugar first while the whites are beaten separately to a meringue-like foam, to be gently folded in later.
Some recipes use baking powder for leavening. The mixture is poured into cake tin and baked. Both methods take great care to incorporate air in the beating, whisking and sieving stages. This makes a very light product, but it is easy to lose the air by removing the cake before it has finished in the oven. The top of sponge cakes is not iced or decorated.
Sponge Cakes Recipes
