Home › Flour Mixtures Continued: Cake › Flour Mixtures Continued: Cake: Sponge
Flour Mixtures Continued: Cake: Sponge
CREAM SPONGE CAKE 1 1/2 cups of sifted flour 1/4 teaspoonful of salt 2 level teaspoonfuls of baking 2 large eggs powder Thick sweet cream 1 cup of granulated sugar Grated rind of 1 lemon or orange Sift together, three times, the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Break the eggs into a half pint cup, fill the cup with cream, add these with the grated rind to the first mixture and beat thoroughly. Bake in a thick sheet about forty minutes.
QUICK SPONGE CAKE 3 eggs 2 level teaspoonfuls of baking 1 1/2 cups of granulated powder powder 1/2 cup of milk or water 1/2 teaspoonful of salt 2 cups of sifted flour Beat the eggs, without separating the whites and yolks, and beat the sugar in gradually; add the milk and the flour, sifted two or three times with the baking powder and salt. Bake in a sheet about twenty-five minutes. Half of this recipe may be made by using one whole egg and the yolk of another with half of each of the other ingredients.
Two related sponge-type cakes, both leavened with baking powder rather than by long beating of separated eggs. Neither gives an oven temperature, and both depend on a measuring trick that needs spelling out.
- The half-pint cupIn the cream sponge, the eggs go into a half-pint (1 cup, 8 fl oz) measure and cream is poured in to fill it. Two shelled eggs come to something like 1/3 to 3/8 cup, so the cream is roughly 5/8 to 2/3 cup. This is a displacement measurement, not two separate quantities.
- Thick sweet cream"Sweet" means unsoured, and "thick" means the heaviest cream available. Use heavy whipping cream, 36 percent fat, unwhipped. Half-and-half or light cream will give a flatter, drier crumb.
- Oven temperatureNeither recipe gives one. A moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern equivalent; if the top colours before the centre sets, drop to 325F.
- "A thick sheet"A sheet cake baked in a shallow rectangular pan rather than a layer tin. No pan size is given; something like an 8-inch square would give the cream sponge the depth implied by "thick", and the larger quick sponge batter spread in a bigger pan would sit thinner, which is at least consistent with its shorter time.
- Sifting three timesSifting the sugar in with the flour, baking powder and salt distributes the leavening evenly and lightens the dry mixture. The rise here is chemical, not from beaten whites. Worth doing as directed.
- DonenessJudge by a tester coming out clean and the cake springing back when pressed, rather than by the clock. Both batters are thin and oven depths vary.
- HalvingThe note at the end of the quick sponge -- one whole egg plus one yolk, everything else halved -- scales the cake down for a small household. In a smaller pan it will likely want less than the twenty-five minutes stated; watch it rather than trusting the clock.
- Citrus rindGrate only the coloured zest of the lemon or orange. Rub it into the sugar before sifting if you want the flavour more pronounced.
Sponge cake originally meant a cake raised entirely by eggs, beaten long and hard, and the older manuals give directions calling for prolonged whisking. Both cakes here belong to the later chemical-leavening era: baking powder became a reliable household staple in the second half of the nineteenth century, and cookbook writers quickly produced quick sponges and cream sponges that kept the name and the light crumb while cutting the labour. The cream sponge in particular uses the fat already suspended in heavy cream instead of creaming butter separately. That both appear here is telling: small households wanted cake without a morning's work or a large pan of leftovers, and the closing note on making half the recipe with one egg and one yolk is exactly the sort of arithmetic these books existed to supply.