Home › Village Receipts › Sunshine Cake
Sunshine Cake
Beat the yolks of five eggs until thick and creamy, add one cup granulated sugar and three-fourths cup well-sifted flour to which one teaspoon of baking powder has been added; beat well. Whip the whites of the five eggs until stiff, and fold in. Flavor with lemon or orange juice, or vanilla if preferred. Bake in a Turk's head in a moderate oven.
— Mrs. Edgar Washburn
A five-egg sponge with no butter and no liquid beyond the eggs themselves. Everything depends on how much air survives from the bowl to the pan.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe yolk-sugar-flour base is thick, and dumping the whites in at once will collapse them. Lighten the base with a third of the whites first, then fold the rest in two additions with a spatula, stopping while a few streaks remain.
- A Turk's headA fluted ring mould with a central tube, of the same family as the moulds the modern bundt pan descends from. Any 9- to 10-inch tube pan works; the tube is what lets the centre of a tall eggy batter set before the edges overbake.
- Leave the pan bareThe recipe says nothing about preparing the pan. A sponge climbs by gripping the sides, so no greasing and no flouring, and no nonstick pan if you have a plain aluminium one.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350 to 375F. At around 350F a 9-inch tube pan should take somewhere near 30 to 40 minutes, until the top springs back and a skewer in the thickest part comes out clean.
- Cool upside downInvert the pan the moment it leaves the oven and let the cake hang until stone cold, an hour or more. Cooling it upright compresses the crumb into a dense band at the bottom.
- The flavouring is unmeasuredMrs. Washburn gives no quantity. A teaspoon of vanilla, or a tablespoon of lemon or orange juice plus the grated zest, suits five eggs. Much more juice than that will slacken a batter that has no other liquid.
- Baking powder hereMany sunshine cake recipes rely on the whites alone, sometimes with cream of tartar. The teaspoon of baking powder here is insurance and makes the recipe more forgiving of slightly deflated whites; use a fresh tin.
- YieldOne ring cake, ten to twelve modest slices. With no butter and no liquid but the eggs it bakes dry, and it takes well to fruit, whipped cream or a thin lemon glaze rather than heavy frosting.
Sunshine cake belongs to the family of American egg sponges that spread through community cookbooks in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, alongside angel food and the various "gold" and "silver" cakes associated with using up whichever half of the egg a household had left over. The name is usually taken to refer to the colour: the yolks go in as well, giving a deep yellow crumb, where angel food uses whites only and stays white. Cakes of this kind became easier once reliable chemical baking powder and wire egg whisks were common in ordinary kitchens. A cake recipe signed by a named local woman is typical of the church-and-charity compilations of the period, where a cake was as much a small piece of personal reputation as it was a set of instructions.