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Fruit Sponge Cake
7 eggs. 1 1/2 cups sugar. 2 1/4 cups flour. 1/4 teacup cold water. 2 teaspoon baking powder. 1 teaspoon lemon and vanilla. Bake in two layers.
A bare-bones formula of the kind Mrs. Wilson often printed once she had already explained the method elsewhere in the book. It is a baking-powder sponge, and it needs a few gaps filled before it will work.
- The teacupA teacup in this period is roughly 6 fluid ounces, so 1/4 teacup is about 3 tablespoons. The measure is genuinely loose; err toward less water rather than more, since a wet sponge batter will not hold the air you beat into the eggs.
- The flavoring line"1 teaspoon lemon and vanilla" most likely means a teaspoon of each extract. A single teaspoon split between the two would be barely detectable in seven eggs' worth of batter.
- Where is the fruitNothing in the ingredient list is fruit. The name most likely refers to a filling: two sponge layers sandwiched with jam, stewed and sweetened dried fruit, or crushed fresh berries. Roughly a cup of thick fruit filling suits a two-layer cake.
- Method, since none is givenSeparate the eggs. Beat the yolks with the sugar until pale and thick, add the water and extracts, sift in the flour with the baking powder, then fold in the whites beaten to soft peaks. Folding is the hinge here — the eggs are doing most of the lifting and stirring them down leaves you with a flat, rubbery layer.
- Oven350F. A sponge this lean scorches at the edges and stays damp in the center if pushed hotter.
- Pans and timingTwo 9-inch round layers, lightly greased on the bottom only, 22 to 28 minutes, until the top springs back and the cake pulls from the sides. Cool in the pans about ten minutes before turning out; hot sponge tears.
- YieldOne 9-inch two-layer cake, 10 to 12 servings.
Mary A. Wilson wrote for the Ladies' Home Journal and was known for wartime and postwar economy cooking, and her New Cook Book reflects that: recipes are compressed to ingredient lists wherever she thinks the reader already knows the technique. A sponge cake in the older sense was leavened entirely by beaten eggs, which is why the classic proportions run to six, seven or a dozen of them; the teaspoons of baking powder here are of a piece with the period's growing use of chemical leaveners as insurance. Filling two plain layers with jam or stewed fruit was one common way to turn a sponge into a company cake without buttercream.