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.
I tried your recipe and must say its a keeper!!! I made a coffee cake and added strong espresso after step 3. I also added coffee syrup once it was baked 🙂
Thanks for the feedback Sana.
Hi there,
So I’m planning on making your Fire Truck Cake for our son’s 3rd birthday….. I bought your template a couple of days ago (love it!) and I’m just trying to get organised – getting all supplies etc and reading the recipe 30 times…….
The fire truck cake recipe says to double the above sponge cake recipe, but I just wanted to double check if this is correct….? So we are really talking 4 cups of flour and 14 (!) egg whites, plus all the other ingredients times 2??? I’ve bought a 25×25 square cake tin to bake the sponge in….. Also, do I then use ALL of the batter??
I’m SUPER excited to start baking and can’t wait to see the end result and our son’s face when he sees the fire truck cake.
So I made mine in 2- 9 inch rounds….couldnt find the 8″. 300 degrees for 30 minutes (i think i should have taken it out at 25 minutes.) At 30 minutes the cake started to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cooled while inverted and the cake fell out of the pan. A lot of people say they bake cakes for about an hour, but if i baked that long my cake would be a brick.
Hi Sheri, This is why Ann prefers for you to check to see if your cake is cooked rather than give an exact time. An hour would be way to long. In my oven it is usually takes somewhere between 18 and 30 minutes.
HI Mandy, I have made a huge mistake and not separated my eggs, if I follow the recipe (still adding gelatine etc) but add eggs all in one go, do you think that it will be ok? I do not envisage that it will be perfect but don’t want to waste all of the ingredients, I would rather use the eggs for a quiche and start again!
Thank you. Cheryl
Hi Cheryl, the result will not be light and fluffy sponge but you will still get a cake of sorts. I would make the quiche and start again.
Hi, can a make a chocolate cake with this recipe and what would I need to do
Thanks
Hi Christine, This recipe is not suited for a chocolate cake. try this one instead: https://wellness-wave1.news/public_html/chocolate-cake-recipe/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Hi Ann, love your site. I’ve made this cake before but wanted to enquire if it would work as cupcakes given the upside down method?
Hi Bella, It works great for cupcakes but you can’t really do the upside down cooling thing.
I only have a 7″x3″ cake pan, is it suitable for this recipe?
Hi Sanasa, You would probably need 3 pans that size.
Hey Ann! Do we need to use the gelatan?
Hi Arianna, It is best to use gelatine (or halal gelatine if preffered) to ensure the cake is lovely and fluffy but stable and not crumbly. You can leave it out but the results are much more consistent with it in.
Hello. How does this cake freeze please? I would like to get ahead and bake in advance as I haven’t got much time to make a cake for the weekend. Many thanks
Hi Joanne, It does freeze well.
Why add gelatine to sponge cake ingredients
Hi Tracy, sponge cake is light and fluffy but can be very crumbly or collapse easily. The gelatine helps to make the texture of the cake more stable and produces more reliable results. I wouldn’t make a sponge without it now.
Hiyah Ann , can I halve this recipe? If so what are the measurements?
Hi Ann , As I am a vegetarian , what can I take in place of gelatin and eggs ? Thank you . Awaiting your reply soon .:-) 🙂 🙂
Hi Radha, Perhaps try this vegan cake recipe instead: https://wellness-wave1.news/public_html/wp-admin/post.php?post=18862&action=edit</a> . A vegetarian version of gelatin is Halal gelatin and it works well.
To be exact, all vegetarian gelatin is halal, but not all halal gelatin is vegetarian.
Hiu Gastel, I am referring to the brand Halal gelatine rather than a type. THis brand is made from a bean product.
Hi, I was wondering if, for 2 9in cake pans, I should make 2 batches of if one would work. I want them to be very fluffy.
Thanks
Hi Emma, One batch should be plenty for the 2 tins.
Hi, how high are your cake tins? Thank you.
Hi Kelly, The standard tins are usually around 5 or 6cm deep.
Hi ann. What is the purpose of the gelatin powder to cake? Does it have any reaction to the cake? This is my first time to make sponge cake for my grandmother’s birthday tomorrow. Please help me. Thank you
Gelatine is used to improve crumb structure (makes it tighter, less crumbly). It is fine to omit.
HI Jessie, as others have mentioned the gelatine helps to stabalize the structure of the cake, making it light and fluffy but not too crumbly, which can be an issue with sponge cakes. It can be left out but the results will be better and more consistent with it in.
Have you ever made this with gluten free flour?
Hi Romy, Ann hasn’t found a gluten free flour that gives a result she is happy with using this recipe. Gluten free flours work better with cakes that are more moist in texture or they can become to crumbly.
An other question, what if I wanted to make this is a 24cm square caketin. What would the measurement be? Should I just ajust the measument of the ingredients? or bake the cake in two batches? or could I do this in one go and devide everything by 0,9….? please advise….
Hi Eline, I would make roughly one and half times this recipe but bake in 2 tins 24cm square tins or two batches for best results.
Hi Ann , yourcake is yumm , l do everything you say in recipe turn it upside down but twice it seems to sink 1/2 an inch on the base why is that ? Yours doesn’t?? Trevor
I know, i’ve got the same problem. At the end of the 55 min I took it out of the oven en it was fine, 5 minutes later it sank….. 🙁 What went wrong?
Hi Eline, see my comment just below.
Hi Trevoboydstevens, Sinkage is usually a sign of one of two potential problems. Firstly it could be that it wasn’t quite cooked enough or secondly that the ingredients or the they wat the ingredients were mixed has left the cake with a poor structure. Check the quality of your flour and raising agent first. Make sure they are not too old. Secondly make sure eyour mix is good and even without knocking the air out of the cake and lastly try Leaving it to cook just a little longer and see if the results improve. One of the reasons I love this recipe is the cake always stays nice and full and fluffy. I definitely don’t det the sinkage you describe.
This was the best sponge cake I ever made – nay, maybe even the best cake I’ve ever made. Thank you for sharing and thank you for the precise instructions (with weight measurements!).
Our pleasure Angela!
Can I add walnuts to this cake? If so, should it be raw walnuts or toasted/baked walnuts? And when should the walnuts be added? After everything is mixed/folded together? or in with the flour/dry mixture?
Hi Mandy, I would use chopped raw walnuts and mix them with the dry ingredients first.