Perfect Sponge Cake Recipe: Light Fluffy Moist and Tall
The perfect sponge cake should be light, fluffy, moist, tall, soft on the edges and of course beautiful. Easy with the right recipe, painfully frustrating with all of the rest. After testing many, many sponge cake recipes my kids got tired of taking sponge cake in their lunch boxes to school. So I gave them a break for a while. When I came back to it I retested the best ones but was still not satisfied, I tried a heap more that instead of using different amounts of the key ingredients used different methods of combining them. Eventually I tweeked a few of the best ones to come up with this light, fluffy and beautifully moist sponge cake recipe. My favorite.
Sponge Cake Recipe Ingredients
2 cups or 320g (11.29 ounces) plain all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups or 327g (11.53 ounces) sugar
1 Tbsp or 3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp or 7.5g (0.26 ounces) gelatin (powdered)
1/2 cup or 125ml vegetable oil such as canola oil
7 egg yolks or 105g (3.7 ounces)
1 cup or 250millilitres (8.45 fluid ounces) cold water
7 egg whites or 252g (8.89 ounces)
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
To decorate:
1 punnet or 250g (8.82 ounces) or approx 1 2/3 cups strawberries,
600millilitres (20.29 fluid ounces) cream (35% fat),
2 Tbsp icing (powdered) sugar,
1 tsp vanilla essence
(recipe source: adapted from this recipe)
Preheat the oven to 320F (160 degrees Celsius) if using a fan forced oven.
Place your flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and gelatin into a bowl and whisk it to incorporate air and get rid of any lumps.
Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture then pour in the oil, egg yolks and water in that order. Set that bowl to one side.
Put your egg whites and cream of tartar into another bowl and whisk on high speed until you get soft peaks.
Mix together the flour mixture for 30 seconds only or until just combined, don’t over-mix this.
Using a spatula fold in your egg whites in three batches.
Line but do not grease two 20cm (7.87 inches) cake tins and spread the mixture evenly between the two.
Bake in a slow oven, 320F (160 degrees Celsius) for 55-60 minutes.
When it is done leave in the tin and cool upside down.
See the video for how to decorate your sponge cake.
or try the ombre or rainbow cake decorating tutorials
by Ann Reardon How To Cook That
© All Rights Reserved Reardon Media PL 2013
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Hi Ann,
Thankyou so much for sharing,u r so clever, I’ve been enjoying watching the videos u posted, they r easy to understand ESP for me who is new to baking. I have a couple of questions, what is all purpose flour and what is cake flour? I’m not 100% sure about that. Thankyou.
Hi Irma, all purpose flour or plain flour is plain bleached what flour, self raising flour has baking powder added to it and cake flour has some corn starch added to it which interferes with the development of gluten strands so can make cakes softer.
Hi Ann, thankyou so much for replying. Really appreciate it.
🙂
Hi ann,
awesome video, n very good , easy sponge cake.
Im looking to do a black forest cake.
and was wondering if you have any video or receipe for it.
if not can you suggest to make a choc sponge cake instead, how much cocoa powder or chocolate should i add to yr recepe without change the moisture or fluffyness of the cake.
thanks
carol
hi carol i always use this chocolate cake recipe for black forrest. it is more of a mud cake though not light and fluffy. https://www.howtocookthat.net/public_html/chocolate-cake-recipe/
Hi Ann,
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful recipe. It is absolutely devine!!!
If I want to make this cake in a 25cm cake tin… do I need to increase the quantity of the batter or can I just bake it in one 25cm tin…
Blessings to you and your loved ones
Karen
hi karen yes you need ot increase the batter and do not turn upside down on cooling. 20cm cake tin that is 5cm tall has a volume of 1570cm2, at 25 cm tin of same height is 2453 so you’ll need 1.5x the recipe
Hi Ann,
I was wondering would this sponge cake be suitable with layers of custard in between? I want to try make an continental cake 🙂
Thanks
yes counds good
Here the photo of the cake I decorated.
Cheers
Hi mary, your cake looks light and fluffy well done
Hi Ann
Thanks so much for this lovely recipe, just one problem I have. I have baked these twice n both times the bottom of the cake looks uncooked when its cooled. but I have cooked it for 60min, when i put the cake taster it came out cooked. i decorated it with icing on the outside the inside went dry after two days. Do u know why please help
Thanks so much xoxoxo
hi mary most sponge type cakes will be dry after two days, you can spray them with sugar syrup before decorating to keep them moist. As tot he base being moist that will be if you are cooling it upside down the steam staying in the tin.
Hi Ann,
I followed your instruction and baked the cake for 60 mins. But the surface of the cake became sticky when it got cooled and got stuck to the cooling rack 🙁 It happens all the time, although the bottom is nice and moist and everything is perfect, except for the top.
Do you know what the problem is????
Hi Amy, the top of the cake doesn’t need to touch a cooling rack, just tip it upside down and rest the edges of the tin on two cups or something similar.
I was wondering if this recipe can be turned into a chocolate sponge cake? And what can be altered?
Hi Mina, Whenever i make chocoalte cake I like it to be rich so I use my chocolate cake recipe instead
Hi Ann, can u use this to make cupcakes? If so can i use half to make 12 cupcakes?
Hi Nikhat yes and yes
Hi Ann, do you think this sponge cake would be nice with the addition of some lemon rind or juice (or both!)? I would like to give it a nice lemon flavour. Let me know what you think 🙂
sounds great, decrease the liquid in the cake in an equal amount to the lemon juice that you add.
Hi Ann
Just wonder if you could tell me I leave in NZ but the only flour I can find at the supermarket to make sponge cake is self rising flour are they different from a cake flour?
Thanks
grace
Hi grace, self raising flour is plain all purpose flour with some baking powder added.
Hi Ann, Thanks for sharing this wonderful recipe, can’t wait to try it. My oven is very small, can I halve the ingredients and bake one layer at a time, or can I store the batter in the refrigerator and bake a second batch, do you think it would turn out okay?
hi ann i was wondering if you only use egg yokes or you use something else
Btw I made the cake for my birthday and everyone loved it.
Hi Ann what kind of cream do you use for the frosting?
I have a few questions:
1. When making the whipped cream, you say to use 600ml of cream….but what kind of cream?
2. For making the whipped cream, is it significant to use icing sugar? Can regular sugar be a substitute??
3. Could you please tell me all the information on the pans that you used to make the sponge cake? (size/what kind of baking pan)
4. Where can you buy the parchment/baking paper?
I’m sorry if I’m asking for too much but I’m trying to make a cake for my father’s birthday. Hopefully it turns out correctly. Thanks! 🙂 xx
I LOVE THIS CAKE!
I have also tried dosens of Sponge cakes and this one is just heaven on earth!
I did substitute the Gelatine for the same amount of agar agar powder and that worked just fine!
I am now working thouroghly on stuffing my face with it 😉
Ann you are my sponge cake hero!
20 Thumbs up!
Awesome thanks for testing with agar now I can let people know they can use that to replace the gelatin if needed.
Hi Ann, great cake so huge thanks. Can you let people know that gelatine sheets can be used fine. I just used the cup of water in the recipe to heat with the sheets and then cooled it back down before adding to the rest of the recipe. I am going to attempt a large 12 inch square tin for a large birthday cake. Any ideas on quantity of recipe to use and cooking time please?
Please let me know if this cake does well being frozen and thawed out later on. I’m used to doing this from working in a bakery and making huge batches of cake and freezing most of it for a week’s use. I also only live with my boyfriend and don’t make much bigger than 6in cakes at a time so it’d be nice to know if freezing would affect it the quality significantly.
Hi Mina, I have never frozen this cake, with 5 of us in the house it goes pretty quickly.
Hi Ann, I followed your instruction and baked the cake for 60 mins. But the surface of the cake became sticky when it got cooled and got stuck to the cooling rack 🙁 It happens all the time, although the bottom is nice and moist and everything is perfect, except for the top. Do you know what the problem is????
Hello!
If I only wanted to make one cake instead of two layers, how long would it take to cook?
Thanks xx
Hi caitlyn approximately the same time because you are not decreasing the tin size, just putting one tin in the oven instead of two.