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.
can this recipe be used for sheet cake? If so, how long do I bake it?
I’m going to try to make your LV purse cake but my friends is not a chocolate fan.
I will be purchasing your cake template.
Hi Nancy, Yes you can. Ann makes a lot of her 3D cakes using slab/sheet cakes using this sponge recipe. You could use the same quantity as per the LV bag recipe. Ann cooks them at about 160 degrees Celsius and checks them around the 20minute mark to see if they are ready.
Hi Judeth, That seems very strange as the recipe is right on the blog page with the video. Here is the link to the page: https://wellness-wave1.news/public_html/heart-cupcake/%3C/a%3E .
Hi Ann, can i use this recipe to make cupcakes?
Hi Tiffany, Yes you can.
quick question. How many degree is low tempreture to bake this sponge? 180C?
Hi Yinn, Ann usually recommends 160 degrees celsius for a fan forced oven.
Thank you. I just finish mixing one and it’s in the oven. I realize that the conversion for 2 cups of flour is 250g and not 320g. I had a very dry and sticky batter and I added 1 more tbsp of oil and water. I hope it works. I over beat my egg whites and now I understand what u mean by not being able to combine into the flour mixture. Nevertheless, it is in the oven now I praying that it works. Thank you so much for the tips!
Hi Yinn, Cup measurements vary from country to country which is why we like to give the grams for clarity. 2 cups is 320g approximately not 250. I have used this recipe a lot and it is very reliable. I hope your mix works any way.
Hi Ann, when I used 320g of flour it turns out like a cookie dough. The cake did bake out but it’s a little hard and dry. I have just finished baking a 2nd batch using 250g of flour and the consistency looks just like yours in the video. It’s cooling down now and I am praying and keeping my finger crossed that it will be soft and moist. Thanks Again!
Hi Yinn, Glad it’s working for you. If you are using smaller eggs this might make the smaller flour quantity work better for you. From the photo it is looking good.
Here’s picture of the sponge cooling down.
Hi Ann, is it okay if I omit the gelatin?
Hi Louis, We wouldn’t recommend leaving it out. The gelatin is key to the cakes texture and stability.
Ann hey about how many minutes did you whip that meringue mixture to get to stiff peaks?
Hi Celinr, it will really depend on the quality of your mixer, it’s speed and to some extent your egg whites. It culd take around 7 minutes with an electric mixture.
I am a muslim, substitutes for gelatin?
Hi Safa, Halal Gelatin works well as a replacement.
Hi Ann!
I really really love your videos so much I even watched each video at least 4 times and I learned a lot from you, mom was amazed 🙂
Well I don’t have cream of tartar where I live so what can I use instead?
Please answer I need your help!! Thanks~ 🙂
Hi Shaddy, In some places it is called tartaric acid and comes as a powder. You can also purchase it online.
I too Ann, as well as Reena, would love a great eggless, but also vegan & gluten free sponge recipe. I mostly substitute eggs, with powdered flax seed. I have never made one that I love, they are always just passable. love your videos.
I have tried to stabilize cream cheese frosting with powdered agar agar a couple of times, but very unsuccessfully. I’d love to see, or read more about how to use powdered agar agar?
Hi there,
Love your videos, but I am running into some issues. I am in America so the pans that I am using are 9″ pans, so my first attempt was not glorious. It was flat and when I tried to flip it over ( very hard to do when your cake tins do not have tabs on the sides) it just fell right out. ( I used non stick pans.. Perhaps no?) I saw in earlier comments that for a 9 in pan I would have to times the recipe by 1.25 but now my problem is that it is puffing up like a mushroom. The pans were filled to the brim. I am using grams and ml just to make sure the weights are correct and still don’t know why everything is going sideways? Any advice?
Hi Cassandra, When I bake this cake, the mixture puffs over the edge, which is what helps it stay in the pan when you flip it over. It sounds like you are on the right track.
Hi, i want to use this recipe as a wedding cake recipe. How tall is this cake? As baked like above
Hi Lil, This would be small for a wedding cake. It would serve about 15 people.
Dear Ann,
My mom is throwing a big barbecue party Sunday and I want to suprise the guests with this amazing sponge cake. The problem is that my country doesn’t sell gelatin powder anywhere! I can only find the gelatin sheets. Can I make this cake without gelatin or is there any substitute?
Thank you!
Hi Marlenka, that is really unusual. You should be able to get it from health food stores and it is available online. If you can’t get gelatine powder you can usually get halal gelatine. You can usually replace gelatin powder with leaf gelatin, though you will need to soak it first. Follow the instructions on the packet.
Hi can you please. Please show an eggfree vanilla sponge
.
Thanks
Thank you so much, it was delicious:)
Hi Judith, This cakes look lovely. I want a slice!
Will try yo recipe
hi ann can u pls tell me difference between full cream and fresh cream.what type of cream do u use for making frosting?i get fresh cream and when i tried to use it for frosting it doesn’t give soft peaks as u made.pls tell me what went wrong.
Hi Sunaina, Usually when we talk about full cream the recipe is listing full cream milk as an ingredient. Milk comes in all sorts of varieties which are called by different names depending on the region you are from.
When a recipe calls for fresh cream, it is referring to cram not milk. Again Cream comes in different forms in different regions. Ann has a blog page to help you work out what cream you need: https://wellness-wave1.news/public_html/cream-use/%3C/a%3E.%3Cbr /> In this recipe, Ann uses cream to create the filling between the cake layers and she is using a cream with at least 35% fat content. In Australia it is called cream or pure cream because nothing has been added to it.
If you use a cream with a similar fat content, it will whip to make soft peaks.
If i bake 2 quantities of this recipe in a 15cm cake pan, how high would it be. Is it too high for a tier in a wedding cake?
Hi Quynh, Ann recommends baking the cakes as described in the video. and then assemble as you would like. Trying to make one large cake would take ages to cook and possibly be undercooked in the middle.
Sponge cake recipe is in my oven right now 🙂
Hello, I’ve just tried this recipe and my cake has ended up flat as a pancake! What did I do wrong?
Hi Adam, Assuming your ingredients were all according to the recipe including the baking powder, it sounds very much like all the air was beaten of your mixture. This could be because the egg whites were not beaten enough or when the egg white mixture was added to the flour it may have been over mixed. It is important to just mix it in and not overmix. This should be done by hand with a spatula and not a mixer, to keep the mixture light. You could also have this issue of the mix sat on the bench too long before going in the oven.
Hi Ann, I was wondering if I can add Strawberry essence to ingredients to give it more strawberry taste, would my cake still be fluffy and tasty? As I’m planning to bake it this weekend. Thank you.
Hi Lerato, I think you can add the strawberry essence and the texture would stay the same. I cannot promise you this, but I heard that you can add vanilla extract or essence into it, so why not with strawberry essence? I also heard you should put only a teaspoon max. Hopes this helps!
I’ve added cocoa powder, vanilla extract and coconut extract before, they all turn out just fine! 🙂
Hi Lerato, Ann suggests to try using a packet of strawberry jelly or jello crystals instead of the gelatin.