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
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Ann, I have two questions. 1. Can this recipe be used for cupcakes? 2. The recipe asks for sugar, is it normal sugar? Thanks! And I love your web!!
Hi Melissa, I use caster sugar when I bake and yes it makes lovely cupcakes, but don’t tip upside down
I used regular granulated sugar and it turs out just fine.
i loved ur sponge cake ,i tried it today its realy PERFECT
my family loved is so much its light soft easy cake , thank you alot
Hi Ann,
I really want to make this cake but there is one thing that i didn’t find when I went shopping (tartar) what can i put instead.
please reply soon
Thank you.
Sarah
hi sarah the cream of tartar helps stabilise the egg white, it is sometimes also called tartaric acid. You can use a small amount of lemon juice or leave it out.
Ann tried this recipe and like you said it is the perfect sponge cake, gonna let you know how my lamingtons go. got another question, if i wanted to make this sponge chocolate how much cocoa should i add? thanks
hi ann, love your baking your recipes, just a question on the sponge cake, do you think it would work as making lamingtons? thankkyou and keep up the good work..
Hi george yes I think it would be delicious for lamingtons great idea
As the title of the recipe says: perfect! I was indeed sceptical when I first set out, but I was more than pleasantly surpRised with the outcome. great results first time. One question though, was wondering if the recipe would work as well if I reduced the amount of sugar?
Thanks Ann you’re a legend
Hi Zee,
I know I’m not Ann but I reduce the sugar in almost all of the recipes I use and I have done so for this recipe in the past. The sponge still turned out beautifuly for me when I did
Thank you so much Ann
I stumbled on your site all the way from Nigeria, West Africa
I tried this recipe yesterday and it won my heart with its fluffiness
Also tried the roll cake recipe and it was fantastic
Thank you so much for the tutorials
Hi ann
Thanks for the recepie but unfortunately it didnt come out right at all.my cake didnt rise for some reason.Is it could be because I used plain flour and not self raising flour.please help I really want to try this recepie again.
Hi Jasmine, plain flour is correct, and then you add the baking powder which makes it rise. Double check the size of your cake tin and oven temp.
Hi Ann, I made this cake and the texture was just what I wanted but my family thought it lacked flavour. Thank you for this amazing recipe however any suggestions on how I could make the cake taste more flavoursome? My friend suggested that I use butter instead of oil but would that ruin the cake’s texture?
Thanks 🙂 x
Hi Afra yes that would change the texture if you swapped in butter. Sponge cakes are fairly plain then you can add flavour to your filing. You can however flavour the cake too… try adding vanilla bean or vanilla extract to the milk, or swap out some of the milk for different juices to get varying flavors.
Hi Ann, great site,love everything you make.
Just wondering do I use caster sugar or, Just white sugar for the sponge cake?
Hi Maria, use caster sugar if you have it
Hi ann! Thank you so much for this recipe, i loved it! I’ve read some of the comments below and now I know this cake should not be covered in fondant, but I wanted to ask what would happen if it was?
Hi Stephanie you can cover it if it is a small cake but it is just a light cake so if it is too tall it will not hold the weight and will get squashed down (which will make the fondant sides crinkled)
Oh! Thank you! I’d like to make a 40 cm x 9 cm round fondant cake, will it be okay? I mean, its not tall, its just a little bit wider.
Hi Ann,
I am living in saudi arabia.Your cake looks awesome.I could hardly wait to give it a try.I have just one question..Can i use spring form tins if so how can I cool them.Thanks for all your leg work to give us aperfect sponge cake recipe…
hi hidayathullah yes if it a 20cm tin that will be fine, if you are unable to tip upside down you can leave the right way up.
hi! i love your channel.!!!
I went out shopping to buy gelatine (im in the uk) for the cake(its my sisters birthday) and then when i watched the video i saw that you used powdeed gelatine. can i use the leaf gelatine and if i can how much?
Hi jennifer you would need to make it into a powder in a food processor
Hi im 11,I live in nz and i made your sponge cake and it turned out amazeballs.
wonderful to hear Maia I am so glad
Hi Ann.
Thank u for all the great recipies. I would like to ask you about the best cake recipe to be covered by fondant? Thanks alot.
hi dima if it is not a high stacked cake then yes – something around the size of the pillow cake would be fine, anything higher then I would use a denser cake.
Hi, ann can i use swiss meringue butter cream for frosting in this cake as im planning to bake for my sis birthday. Thank you
Hi mas yes you can
Hi Ann
I’d like to use this recipe to make my daughters first birthday cake.
I’m using 2 loaf tins sized 28 x 13 x 7 cm
How much will I need to make and how long do I cook it for?
Hope you can help!!!
Thanks again!!!
Hi Hayley the volume of your tins are 2 (two tins) x 28 x 13 x 7 = 5096cm squared
my tins are 2 (two tins) x 100 (radius squared) x 3.14 (pi) x 5 (tall) =3140 cm squared
so you need 1.7 times the recipe (perhaps double the recipe and bake the spare as 8 cupcakes)
How long it will take to cook is harder to calculate, I’d set your timer for 15 minutes and then keep checking every 5 minutes after that
Hi Ann,
After watching this video I went ahead and tried out this recipe and I have to say that it came out absolutely amazing and I will be using this recipe for all the white sponge cakes I make.. I just have a question regarding the cooling process of the cakes… I don’t have the kinda cake pans u used with the handles I have the regular cake pans… When I flipped the cakes over they flopped out of the pan and as they cooled the deflated .. What can I do do keeps my cakes from deflating if I don’t have cake pans with handles? What can I do to keep my cake from plopping out of the pan when I turn it upside down to cool??
Thanks in advance for the advice and your awesome cake recipe!! Its a huge hit with my family!
Hi Luz, make sure you don’t grease the sides of the pan and check the tin size is 20cm, if it is bigger you will need more mixture. If you can’t flip them tehn leave the right way up in the tin to cool.
Hello Ann
I had a go at the cake and everything was going just fine the cake was rising in the oven and them all of a sudden it started shrinking and it came out like it was falling over itself it never happen to me before i must have done something wrong and ideas what it was ? I also tried the chocolate one I have no words to describe how good that cake was it was gone in 2 hours amazing
thank you so much for that recipe.
sounds like what happens if the oven temp drops when it is not yet cooked
I made birthday cake with your recipe and it turned out beautifully..thank you Ann…
awesome, love the way you decorated it