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Sponge Cake (Twelve eggs one pound)
Twelve eggs, one pound of powdered sugar, threefourths of a pound of flour, juice of one lemon. Beat eggs thoroughly, add sugar by degrees, beat half an hour, stir in flour lightly and bake.
A leavening-free foam cake: the entire rise comes from air beaten into whole eggs, which is why the half-hour of beating is not decoration but the method itself. Everything else follows from protecting that foam.
- The hinge: keep the air inOnce the eggs and sugar reach the ribbon stage — pale, thick, and falling back on themselves in a slowly dissolving band — the flour goes in by hand in three additions, folded with a spatula until barely streak-free. Stirring it in with a mixer, or overworking it, collapses the batter and gives a dense, rubbery layer.
- "Powdered sugar" is not confectioners' sugarIn older American usage it means granulated sugar ground fine, closest to today's caster or superfine sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will change the texture; use superfine, or pulse granulated sugar briefly in a food processor.
- Quantities in cupsOne pound of superfine sugar is about 2 1/4 cups. Three-quarters of a pound of flour is 12 oz, roughly 3 cups sifted — weigh it at 340 g if you can, since sponge batters are unforgiving of a heavy flour hand. Twelve large eggs come to about 600 g out of the shell.
- Half an hour of beatingThat figure assumes a hand whisk or a crank egg-beater. A stand mixer with the whisk on high reaches the same ribbon stage in 8 to 12 minutes. Warming the eggs to room temperature, or over a bowl of warm water, gets you there faster and with more volume.
- No oven temperature is givenBake at about 325F. This is a large batter: it will fill a 10-inch ungreased tube pan, needing 45 to 60 minutes. If you use 9-inch ungreased layer pans instead, the batter will fill more than two; bake them 30 to 35 minutes. The cake is done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- Do not grease the panA fatless sponge climbs by gripping the sides. Grease, and it slides back down. Invert the pan on a bottle or on its feet as soon as it leaves the oven and leave it until fully cold, then release with a thin knife.
- The lemonJuice of one lemon is the only flavouring and also mild acid, which helps stabilise the egg foam. Add it near the end of the beating rather than at the start, and consider adding the zest as well.
- YieldA twelve-egg batter makes a large tube cake serving 12 to 16, or two layers. It stales quickly, having no fat; serve within a day, or with fruit and cream on the second.
Cakes of this kind were often identified by their egg count — twelve eggs, a pound of sugar, three-quarters of a pound of flour — proportions simple enough to carry in the head, with the eggs supplying the only leavening. Sponge cake predates chemical raising agents entirely; European recipes for beaten-egg cakes are generally traced back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the technique reached American household books long before saleratus and baking powder became common. Light, fatless, faintly lemony sponges of this sort were served on invalid trays, at tea tables, and under stewed fruit.