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Simple Sponge Cake
Three-fourths cup sugar; one cup sifted flour; one and one-half teaspoons baking powder; two eggs beaten with the sugar; a pinch of salt; two large (kitchen) tablespoons cold water; any flavouring desired. (If wine is used substitute one tablespoon of it for one of water). This makes a small cake.
A hot-water-style sponge leavened with both eggs and baking powder, written for a cook who already knew how to fill a tin and judge a fire. The proportions are sound; almost everything else has to be supplied.
- The "kitchen" tablespoonThe parenthesis is doing real work: a household serving spoon of the period generally held more than a level measuring tablespoon, though how much more varied. Two of them are probably nearer 3 tablespoons of water than 2, and adding it gradually is safer than dumping it in.
- No oven temperature is givenBake at 350F. A sponge this lean scorches at the edges before the centre sets if pushed to 400F.
- Pan and time"A small cake" means one 6-inch round, a small loaf, or about eight cupcakes. Expect 20 to 25 minutes; the top should spring back and a tester come out clean.
- Beating the eggs with the sugarThis is the hinge. Beat whole eggs and sugar together until pale, thick, and falling in a ribbon, several minutes with a mixer. Much of the lift comes from that foam, though the teaspoon and a half of baking powder is a generous dose and does real work too.
- Folding in the flourSift the flour with the baking powder and salt, then fold it in by hand in two or three additions. Stirring it briskly at this stage deflates the eggs and produces a tough, flat cake.
- FlavouringAbout half a teaspoon of vanilla, or the grated zest of half a lemon. If you use the wine option, a fortified wine such as sherry or Madeira gives something you can actually taste at one tablespoon.
- YieldFour to six small servings. It is best the day it is made; sponge without butter stales quickly.
Sponge cake as a class predates chemical leavening entirely, relying on nothing but eggs whipped with sugar, and the sturdier baking-powder versions like this one spread through American household cookery after commercial baking powders became cheap and reliable in the second half of the nineteenth century. A plain, butterless, quickly mixed cake of this kind is the sort of base a compiler might want on hand before the fruit chapters begin -- to be split and filled with berries and cream, layered with stewed or preserved fruit, or lined into a mould for a charlotte -- though the recipe itself says nothing of the sort. The optional spoonful of wine in place of water is an older habit, from a time when sherry and Madeira were among the common flavourings for cakes and puddings, before bottled vanilla extract became a pantry staple.