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Delicious Cream Sponge Cake
Yolks 4 eggs, 1 cup sugar, 3 tbsp. cold water, 1½ tbsp. cornstarch, 1 scant cup of flour, 1½ tsp. Royal baking powder, 1 tsp. lemon extract, 1/4 tsp. salt, whites 4 eggs. Beat yolks until thick; add sugar gradually and beat two minutes. Then add water, mix and sift cornstarch, flour, baking powder and salt, and add this to the first mixture. Fold in stiffly-beaten whites and flavoring. Bake about twenty minutes in a moderate oven. This cake may be made with two eggs, and using two additional teaspoons of baking powder, and two additional tablespoons of water.
— Lena M. Davis
A hot-milk-free, butterless sponge that leans on well-beaten eggs and a little cornstarch for tenderness. The recipe assumes you know what pan to use and how full to fill it, so a few decisions are left to you.
- Moderate ovenBake at 350F. A sponge this lean scorches at the edges before the center sets if the oven runs hot.
- Pan and yieldNo pan is named. The batter suits an 8- or 9-inch square, a 9-inch round, or a shallow jelly-roll sheet; twenty minutes fits a thin layer, so expect 25 to 30 minutes in a deeper 8-inch pan. Test with a skewer and by the cake springing back. Serves 8 to 10.
- Do not grease heavilyFat-free sponges climb the sides of the pan. Line the bottom with parchment and leave the sides bare, or use an ungreased tube pan, and cool the cake in the pan so it does not collapse.
- Beating the yolks"Until thick" means pale and ribboned — three to five minutes with a mixer. Together with the whites it supplies much of the lift, so shortchanging it gives a dense, rubbery layer.
- Folding is the hingeAdd the sifted dry ingredients to the yolk base, then fold the whites in with the flavoring in two or three additions using a spatula, stopping while a few streaks remain. Stirring at this stage deflates the whites and no amount of baking powder recovers it.
- Royal baking powderA cream-of-tartar (tartrate) powder, faster-acting than today's double-acting products. Modern baking powder measures the same, but get the batter into the oven promptly.
- Scant cup of flourJust under a level cup — about 4 oz / 115 g. Use all-purpose; cake flour with the cornstarch already in the formula makes the crumb fragile.
- The two-egg variationHalving the eggs and adding leavening and water gives a plainer, more biscuit-like cake. It was a thrift measure when eggs were seasonal and expensive, and the extra baking powder can leave a faint metallic edge.
Sponge cakes built on beaten eggs rather than butter were the everyday festive cake of American church and lodge cookbooks, compiled as fundraisers with each recipe signed by the contributor. Two details fit that setting: the cornstarch, which softens the crumb by diluting the wheat's gluten and became a common home trick once boxed cornstarch was cheap; and the naming of Royal baking powder, a brand whose aggressive advertising in that era made cooks specify it as if it were an ingredient category. The two-egg alternative at the end is the honest note in the recipe — a household that kept hens knew that eggs came in flushes and slumps, and a good cake formula was one you could stretch.