sponge cake

The wonderful thing about having a blog is that last night when I was still reeling from what-the-hell happened?  I was able to look back at my life for the last little while.  And reading my entries from the start of this whole disaster at the end of October all the way up to now, gave me some sort of perspective.  I felt comforted somehow, by visiting back to those past times.  I did the best I could.  Nothing else to be done but to step off this emotional roller coaster. 

When I woke up in the middle of the night…now that was a different story.  I wasn’t feeling comforted at all.  The thing about those middle of the night rampages where every fear or worry gums you to death, is that there are no distractions.  You put one worry down and another one leaps into the gap. 

Anyway, enough of that.  It’s out of my hands.  Move on.  As I was reading back over the last month and a half, I noticed that right before all this happened I promised that I would post my favorite cake recipe.  I love this cake because unlike angel food cake, you use the whole egg and it’s not as sweet.  I find angel food cake too sweet for me.  I’ll eat it if there is absolutely nothing else around, but I far prefer sponge cake. 

This is not a recipe that I made up however.  I got it from my grandmother’s old Betty Crocker’s Cookbook.  The first edition.  It’s funny how much these cookbooks have changed over the years.  (In my mind, not for the better.)  Anyway, this is an old-fashioned cake.  You can serve it with any icing you like.  My family is partial to my butter icing, but I like this cake best with sliced fresh strawberries and a generous dollop of freshly made whipped cream.  I make this cake a lot once strawberries come into season, filling the front section of the grocery store with their summertime fragrance.  But sometimes if I’m desperate, I’ll make it in the winter with imported strawberries that taste faintly of cardboard, and I have to squeeze half a lemon over them and sprinkle them with a little bit of sugar.  Or I’ll make a compote with the frozen summer berries I have stored away in the freezer.

                        Glorious Sponge Cake (that’s what it’s called.  Honest.  I didn’t make that up.)

ingredients: flour, sugar, 6 eggs, water, cream of tartar, salt, (now the recipe calls for 1 tsp of lemon extract and 1 tsp of grated lemon rind.  I don’t do this.  I use vanilla, which is what I’ll write here, but really, it’s your choice.  What do your taste buds prefer?)

-heat oven to 325 degrees (do not use convection.  Use regular bake)
-separate 6 eggs, plopping the yolks in one large mixing bowl and the whites in the other
-beat the yolks on medium speed
-gradually add one cup of white sugar
-then add alternately one cup of white flour
-and 1/4 a cup of cold water
-add one teaspoon of pure vanilla
-turn blender on to medium high speed and blend for a total of 5 minutes

In a whites mixing bowl
-add 1/2 tsp of cream of tartar
-1/2 tsp of salt
-Beat on high speed until the white form stiff white peaks (this means that when you turn the mixer off and dip the beaters into the mixture when you take them out it makes little snow-capped mountains designs

-fold with a rubber spatula 1/3 of the white mixture into the yolk mixture.  Repeat this 3 times until the whole white mixture is in the yolk.  DO NOT OVER FOLD!  Just fold it in enough so that it is uniform in color.

-pour into an ungreased 10” tube pan (Another description for an angel food cake pan)  Or, if you don’t have an angel food cake pan, dump the mixture into a 13X9’ oblong pan(on this pan you grease ONLY the bottom on the pan.)  It doesn’t look as fancy but it still tastes great!
-put in the oven and bake for 60-65 minutes for tube/angel pan, 35-40 for oblong pan.
-Cool tube/angel cake pan upside down.  Cool oblong pan right side up, like a regular cake.
-Cool throughly before serving with whatever strikes your fancy.

In writing this recipe I realized that I have made this recipe my own as well.  It not written at all like the book and I’ve changed some of the ingredients and tweaked the order and blending process.  Funny.  I never realized it before.  I thought I was doing it verbatim!

Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 in Recipes