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
Stores that sell my book listed by country:
http://bit.ly/ARcookbook
All recipe quantities in the book are in grams, ounces and cups.
Hello Ann!
Love your creations… I am going to use this recipe to bake my daughters b’day cake. My question is, if I needed to make this cake in a half sheet pan how would I adjust the quantities?
Hi Noopur, Ann regularly makes this cake in sheets. She would usually use one and a half quantities would do 2 baking trays that are 15 inch by 10 inch.
I love this recipe so much, thank you Ann, you have inspired me to start my own food blog!!
Wow Tarini, That is fabulouis!
hi, can I substitute the vanilla extract with vanillin powder instead?
Hi Mariana, We don’t have the powder here so not sure if it will give the result you want. Let us know if you try it.
I love this recipe! How far ahead of time can it be made? Also wondering how to store if made early. Thank you!
Hi Arielle, sponge cake is always best fresh, but I usually make it the day before it needs to be served. If you want to store it, you can wrap the fully cooled cakes individually in plastic wrap so fully sealed and freeze. You will need to use them within a week or so and let them fully defrost before decorating.
Totally agree, nothing beats fresh cake. Super strapped for time leading up to party day though, so this is good news. Thank you!
where has this been all my life! I just tried it and it turned out amazing, thank you so much for sharing this recipe with us!!
Glad to be of service Adriana!
“Preheat the oven to 320F if using a fan force oven”; what temperature do I bake at if I don’t have a fan force oven?
Hi Li, Ann always bakes using a fan forced oven but the common practice is have your oven slightly warmer if not using a fan. We think it would be safer to bake at the same temperature but allow some extra cooking time for a great result.
Isn’t there any other thing I can use to replace gelatin and tartar
Hi anonymus, these ingredients help give the cake its light fluffy but stable texture. Best to include these if you can. Some people like to replace the cream of tartar with some vinegar or lemon juice, but I find it doesn’t work as well.
That cake looks amazing. I was wondering if we could use this recipe and transform it into a s’mores cupcake?
Hi Talia, Sounds like a yummy idea! Go for and let us know how it turns out.
Hi 😀 I tried it out an its amazing! Totally changed my perception on dry, hard sponge cakes.Your researches and hardwork have finally paid off! But i would like to ask, why not add the sugar to the meringue, so that the meringue can be more stable and has less chance to deflate. Again, TQVM for your amazing recipe!
Hi Xiulcoatl, It may make the meringue more stable but it becomes too difficult to fold into the mix. The results are better if you follow the recipe.
Alright, thank you for the reply 😀
Hi Ann,
I love your vanilla sponge cake recipe, if I want to turn it into chocolate sponge cake, what is the ratio for cocoa powder? Thanks
Hi Emma, Ann prefers this recipe for a good chocolate cake: https://wellness-wave1.news/public_html/chocolate-cake-recipe/%3C/a%3E .
Please can i use melted magarine in place of oil
can i bake it in a diffirent time and diffirent temperture? Instead of show bake it because i’m worry sometimes i can be in rush and don’t have a lot of time.Can you tell me which temperture i can use to bake my cake? (like higher temp and shorter amount of time)
Thank you very much <3 i have made a lot of your recipes ^^
Hi SocolLa2002, You are vbest to cook the cake as Ann recommends or it just won’t work as it should.
I cooked it at 350 degrees for 25 minues and it worked great
My tins have no handles so I can’t put them upside down-any suggestions?
Hi Trish Gallagher, Neither do mine. I balance the tins on upside down mugs or glasses.
Hi Ann! ive made this cake a lot and its the only cake ive made that my dad will eat! he doesnt have much of a sweet tooth! i was wondering if u can make a video on different gluten free flour because sometimes i make this cake and it turns really bread like and the recipe is great its just the flour i use and i could really use some advice on this! thanks!
Hi Zahra, Gluten free flours can vary greatly. It would be a good idea to experiment with the options available to you to work out what you find works best and is the most effective.
Hi Ann. Just want to say thank you for this recipe. I’ve made it a lot of times and the cakes turned out perfect. Even when I cover it with fondant ! God bless you!
That is great feedback Tolu! Thank you.
Hi ann, i just made a pinacolada cake using your sponge cake recipes. i tried using the same recipe for my earl grey cake too it turned out to be so soft n moist n yummy! i twisted the recipe abit for my pinacolada cake by half the water replacing with coconut milk and i add 2 tbsp of rum. i did two batch using two 5 inch cake tin each batch one is with cake flour one is with ap flour. i find that d ap flour gives less moisture than the cake flour but more fluffy and look more like sponge cake? is that right? i prefer to have more soft n fluffy so should i stick with ap flour? appreciate your feedback. thank u!
Hi Ling, What a great cake. Yes your observations are correct. You should use the type of flour you prefer. Ann’s recipe uses plain flour (all purpose).
I just made it for my moms birthday! Although we didn’t have the right size of pans
Wow Alison, Your cake looks fabulous! I hope you enjoyed eating it.
Very nice recipe! Mine came out really fluffy. But it had a raw egg taste, I wonder if its because I used vinegar instead of cream of tartar, please I ‘d like to know to avoid that next time. Thanks
Hi Dammy, I have had that comment from one or two others who have used the vinegar instead, so that may be the issue. I have never had an eggy taste to the sponge made from this recipe and I always use the cream of tartar.
Hi Anne,
I have used this recipe very successfully many times and also have used it for the Thomas Train cake before. I now want to use it to make a 30cm (12inch) birthday cake – how should I adjust the recipe for this size cake? Would 1,5 times the recipe be enough? or perhaps double the recipe? and how long would I bake it for in 1 tin? I would like to bake it tomorrow so would really appreciate a quick response. Thanks very much.
Hi Anne, You may have made it already but as Ann’s recipe provides a generous quantity, I would recommend increasing the recipe by half to two-thirds. It will all depend on the depth of your tray or desired cake.
I read on a site that you can use baking pouder instead of cream of tartar becaus it helps both to have air in you cake. Is it correctly. (Soory for my English, I come from belgium) Love you
Hi Pauline, Baking powder contains baking soda and a small amount of a weak acid to creat volume and lightness in cakes. cream of tartar is usually the acid used. In this recipe we are require more of the acid to create a firm but airy texture. Adding more baking powder will not be anywhere near as effective.