Perfect Sponge Cake Recipe: Light Fluffy Moist and Tall
The perfect sponge cake should be light, fluffy, moist, tall, soft on the edges and of course beautiful. Easy with the right recipe, painfully frustrating with all of the rest. After testing many, many sponge cake recipes my kids got tired of taking sponge cake in their lunch boxes to school. So I gave them a break for a while. When I came back to it I retested the best ones but was still not satisfied, I tried a heap more that instead of using different amounts of the key ingredients used different methods of combining them. Eventually I tweeked a few of the best ones to come up with this light, fluffy and beautifully moist sponge cake recipe. My favorite.
Sponge Cake Recipe Ingredients
2 cups or 320g (11.29 ounces) plain all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups or 327g (11.53 ounces) sugar
1 Tbsp or 3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp or 7.5g (0.26 ounces) gelatin (powdered)
1/2 cup or 125ml vegetable oil such as canola oil
7 egg yolks or 105g (3.7 ounces)
1 cup or 250millilitres (8.45 fluid ounces) cold water
7 egg whites or 252g (8.89 ounces)
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
To decorate:
1 punnet or 250g (8.82 ounces) or approx 1 2/3 cups strawberries,
600millilitres (20.29 fluid ounces) cream (35% fat),
2 Tbsp icing (powdered) sugar,
1 tsp vanilla essence
(recipe source: adapted from this recipe)
Preheat the oven to 320F (160 degrees Celsius) if using a fan forced oven.
Place your flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and gelatin into a bowl and whisk it to incorporate air and get rid of any lumps.
Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture then pour in the oil, egg yolks and water in that order. Set that bowl to one side.
Put your egg whites and cream of tartar into another bowl and whisk on high speed until you get soft peaks.
Mix together the flour mixture for 30 seconds only or until just combined, don’t over-mix this.
Using a spatula fold in your egg whites in three batches.
Line but do not grease two 20cm (7.87 inches) cake tins and spread the mixture evenly between the two.
Bake in a slow oven, 320F (160 degrees Celsius) for 55-60 minutes.
When it is done leave in the tin and cool upside down.
See the video for how to decorate your sponge cake.
or try the ombre or rainbow cake decorating tutorials
by Ann Reardon How To Cook That
© All Rights Reserved Reardon Media PL 2013
My Cookbook
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All recipe quantities in the book are in grams, ounces and cups.
hi Ann, thanks for sharing your amazing recipes and cake decorating tips and tricks. please let me know if i can use agar agar powder instead of gelatine. and how much i should use. thanks
Yes you can use agar agar powder as I also can’t use gelatine.
hi ann
can u please let me know how much time the cake takes to cool
Hi Yasmine, That varies on where you live. My cakes normally take at least an hour to fully cool.
Hi Ann,I love your videos and you have really inspired my baking,please try coming to Boston on one your trips to the US.
Hi Ann,
The recipe looks very good-however I like to bake thin square layers about 2 inches thick in a large square baking tray. How long do you recommend leaving the tray in the oven? Also as an estimation how many medium/large eggs do you need to make the quantities for egg whites and yolks?
Finally-where did you get the idea of using gelatin? I’m surprised none thought of this before its genius!
Thanks, Fesal.
Hi Fesal, for consistency we say one whole egg is 50g. So this recipe uses at least 7 small to medium eggs. If you were using very large eggs, you could potentially drop it to 6. This is quite a generous cake and Ann cooks it in two tins for to 55-60 mins. Given you are aiming for layers of similar depth, you would need to adjust your quantities a little to suit the size of your trays, then it would be wise to cook it for the same amount of time and then test it (knife test) and estimate how much longer it needs. I wouldn’t try and cook it as one large tray.
Can i use this recipe for a 3 tier wedding cake? Or I should use a denser cake recipe to have better support?
Hi Quynh Pham. This is a great cake for layering and shaping, however for decorated cakes over 2 layers it would always be good to use cake supports or a frame. For a three teir wedding cake you would definitely need it for stability and to manage the weight.
One more picture of the final cake.
The roses were made from gum paste with just a bit of colored fondant.
Yes, this is indeed the perfect sponge cake! My search for a fondant-friendly cake is now officially over. Love the trick of cooling it upside down.
For the cake in the attached picture I used one 24 cm cake pan and a 20 cm ring (one amount of the recipe was enough for both.
It was a huge success.
Thank you!
Hi Ann,
I would like to make this sponge cake recipe, although I don’t want to make two sponges and then put them together with the cream in the middle. I would like to just have one sponge in a Square tin (14.5cm X 14.5cm X 7.5cm) then place fondant on top.
My question is…
1. will the fondant work on top of a sponge cake?
2. will the cake then have to be in the oven for the same time and temperature?
3. will the cake seem to dry with no middle layer?
Thank heaps Ann
Love you passion and skill
xx
Hi Madeline, The cake of this depth would need longer to cook, and since we haven’t tested it, it would be a matter of trialling the time you would need. The risk is that it would become overcooked on outside and undercooked on the inside. It would be better to split the mix into 2 pans and layer it. That would definitely make for a nicer eating experience too. However, if you want to use fondant you would need to coat the cake in something first- a crumb coat such as a buttercream or ganache. Then you could add fondant.
Hi Madelaine,
From personal experience, this cake works perfectly with fondant.
As Ann mentioned, I frosted it first, using Ann’s basic buttercream frosting recipe, then cooled it in the fridge for an hour before covering with fondant.
See picture on my other post on this page.
hey ann. i was wondering… could you use leaf gelatine instead of the powdered variety, because i cant seem to find any
Hey Ann,
i wanted to make a Rainbow Checkerboard Cake for my classmates. We are over 20 persons, so i wanted to make 6 Spongecakes in a 26 cm tin. Should i just double your recipe for a 26 cm tin?
Greetings from Germany
Hi Carla, That sounds amazing! . Each round 20cm x 4cm round tin will produce make about 1.2L by volume of cooked cake. This recipe makes 2 of these so 2.4L in volume approximately. A single 26cm square tin with 4cm (cooked)cake depth will make closer to 2.7L in volume. If you wanted to make 6 layers, you would need 6.75 times the mixture. That is a lot of cake for 20 people and quite a bit of weight. Of course you could reduce the depth of the layers to say 2cm (or 1.3L in volume) – for that you would need at least 3 to 3 and a half times the sponge mix. Have you seen Ann’s rainbow cake: https://wellness-wave1.news/public_html/rainbow-unicorn-cake/%3C/a%3E . She uses packet vanilla cake mix as it handles the overmixing that comes with adding heavy colour to make the rainbow layers. It is probably a good way to go for your project. Ann used half a packet of mix per layer. Depending on the mix, you would need 2.5 -3 packets per layer (2cm depth).
good day, i have made this as cupcake and it was perfect, but i also need a chocolate cupcake,, could i just add cocoa to make it chocolatey?
thanks a lot 🙂
Hi Jolly, If you are wanting to make chocolate cupcakes, Ann recommends this recipe: https://wellness-wave1.news/public_html/best-chocolate-cake-ever/%3C/a%3E . It has a lovely chocolatey flavour.
can i substitute all purpose flour to cake flour ? will it make big differences ?
Hi Hangga, We don’t have ‘çake flour’in Australia. In principle you can use replace the plain flour in this recipe for çake flour as long as it doesn’t have additional rising agents in it. I don’t think Ann has tested this recipe with American style cake flour, so you will need to trial it and see how it goes but I imagine it should work well.
hi Ann I have two questions.
What can I use instead of gelatine because its not halal and so I cant have it?
and why do you not grease the tins because I find when I do that the cake sticks on the side? Any advice for that?
thanks 🙂
Hi Sunny, The best replacement for gelatine in your case would be Halal gelatine. A quick search online would be the best way to find a local supplier. By not greasing the pans, the cake may stick a little, but it means when you turn them upside down to cool, they do not fall out of the pan and the moisture stays in the cake. A light tap and quick run of the knife if needed around the outside loosens the cake enough for removal.
thanks so much 🙂
Hi Ann please help me with this. I have made four or five times your sponge cake but whenever i bake the cake it always happens any problem, first it grown very well and then when it was cooling, it flattens. other time it makes a kind of bump under the cake. I ‘ve already bought a oven thermometer to see if the temperature is right.
Hi Claudia, Can I ask if you are cooling the cakes upside down as per Ann’s video? That does help the cake hold its shape. Here are a couple of things you could consider: Does the cake mix go straight in the oven when it is mixed or is it left to sit on the bench. Have you checked to see the cake is cooked before removing it from the oven? Lastly, I have experienced the problem you mentioned when I have over mixed the flour/egg white mixture. Ann suggests to just combine them and to avoid overmixing.
Hi Ann thanks for answering, i have made all your steps i also let it cool upside down.I will try not mix too much and later i will say how did it go
Hi Ann, sorry for the delay but i finally made it! I think the problem for the bump was mix too much. i made another sponge cake yesterday and it is flat as it should be. Thanks for the help and your topsy turvy cake is beautiful i hope this time portugal comes in your list for the giveaway. Thank you again.
What if you don’t have gelatine what can you use to replace it
Hi Miriam, You can either use Gelatine or Halal Gelatine for this recipe. It is key to the structure and texture of this cake of this cake.
Hi! I’m just wondering why you put gelatin in the recipe. What does it do? Can you omit it in the recipe or is it important?
Hi Abby, the gelatin is key to the success of this cake. It helps create a light and fluffy but stable cake that holds its shape and cuts and shapes well for decorating. Without it you find the cake less stable and more likely to crumb. We recommend you try it.
Hey Ann, i don’t have cream of tartar in my country.. Can i reeplace it with something like lemon juice, bicarbonate or vinegar..? I have heard that it should work but I ‘m not sure
Hi Frida, I have found Cream of Tartar produces the best result but you can substitute it with 1tsp of lemon juice . You could also use vinegar but it can alter the taste.
My question is what is the purpose of the gelatin? Also since this is my first time with this recipe(or ANY sponge cake) how many cupcakes will it make?
I am doing it tomorrow.
Thanks.
Jerri
Hi Jerri, The gelatine is key to this cake as it helps to produce the light, fluffy but stable texture. This quantity should make about 24 cupcakes.
I need to make this into a sheet cake can do that
Yes Jean, you can.
Hi Ann,
I’ve tried so many different recipes and they always turn out really bad but I tried this one and it turned out amazing. Thank you so much for doing this video and sharing your secrets, it really helps.
You are simply the best <3
Thanks Christine. This recipe is an all time favourite for me too.