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Jelly in Sponge Cake
Take a round sponge cake, cut a hole in the center, being careful to leave at least an inch of cake at the bottom. Fill the hole with strawberry jelly, putting it into the cake when the jelly begins to set. Put in a cool place, and just before serving, cover the whole cake with flavored and sweetened cream, whipped stiff.
A summer assembly rather than a baking project: the only real technique is judging when the jelly is thick enough to pour and not so thick it will not flow. Everything else is knife work and whipped cream.
- "Jelly" means gelatine, not jamThe instruction to add it "when the jelly begins to set" places this squarely in the gelatine dessert family — a strawberry jelly made from juice, sugar and sheet or powdered gelatine, of the sort sold today as a jelly/Jell-O mix. Preserve out of a jar will not set and will soak straight into the crumb.
- The hinge: catch it at raw egg whitePour when the jelly has cooled to the consistency of unbeaten egg white — thick enough that it will not run into the cake, loose enough to fill the cavity. Chill the jelly in a bowl of iced water and stir occasionally; from syrup to unpourable can take under five minutes at that stage.
- Sealing the crumbEven correctly timed jelly will bleed a little. Brushing the inside of the hollow with warm sieved apricot jam or a thin film of melted chocolate and letting it set first keeps the walls firm.
- Cutting the cakeA round sponge baked in a plain cake tin, not a tube pan — the point is a solid base. Mark a circle in from the rim with a paring knife, then dig out the middle with a spoon, leaving the inch of cake at the bottom as directed; the recipe gives no thickness for the walls, so judge it by what will stand up. The scooped crumb keeps for a trifle.
- Cooling"A cool place" meant a larder or ice chest. Refrigerate at least three hours, and preferably overnight, so the jelly is fully set before the cake is moved.
- "Flavored and sweetened cream"Heavy or whipping cream, a cup or more for a standard 8-inch cake, whipped to stiff peaks with a tablespoon or two of sugar and vanilla, sherry or a little strawberry juice. Whip it the same day; unstabilised cream weeps within a few hours, which is presumably why the recipe says to cover the cake just before serving.
- Yield and servingAn 8- to 9-inch sponge treated this way gives eight to ten servings. Cut with a thin knife wiped between slices, and serve within an hour of frosting.
This is the domestic cousin of the charlotte and the trifle: a plain cake hollowed out and filled with something cold and set. Gelatine desserts became a fixture of American home cooking once granulated gelatine could be bought in packets rather than boiled down from calves' feet, and books of the early twentieth century are thick with jellied fruit, jellied creams and jellies poured into cake shells. The appeal in a book called Cook and Be Cool is obvious — one sponge cake, baked in the cool of the morning or bought from a baker, carries a whole dessert that needs no further heat. Filling a cake through a cut-out lid or hollow is a very old trick, and the logic of it is plain enough: the baked shell is the container, and the cold filling is the point.