Baking Diary – Log 22 – 23.03.2014
I am back! 🙂
At first, I wanted this post to be the second part of my Hanoi Street Food Saga with my last 3 days on the trip. I started writing it, I did, but there came the point where I could not bring myself to finish it, so I stopped, I don’t want blogging to become a must and not anymore a place where I can purely enjoy my presence.
So, today, I shared another very much loved and used recipes: Hong Kong Style Sponge Cake, a.k.a. my (almost) Foolproof Sponge Cake. I found and twisted this recipe to my taste almost 4 years ago, and my search for a perfect sponge cake completed. It was light, and fluffy, and puffy, and has a cloud-like mouth-feel, not too sweet, not dry at all, just right; study enough to handle rich dollops of whipped cream and berry jam as a Victorian sponge cake.
Excited yet? Me too.
Recipe:
(I missed Finland much, much, much seeing this pic)
Yolk batter
- 4 egg yolks
- 70g cake flour
- 30g cornstarch
- 40g milk
- 40g canola oil (or melted butter)
- ½ tsp. vanilla extract
White batter
- 4 egg whites
- 80g granulated sugar
- ½ tsp. salt
Demonstration:
Step 1: preheat the oven 150 degree C, rack at lower bottom level. Prepare a round 20x7cm cake tin by lining the bottom only, with parchment paper. Don’t cover the side as you want the cake to “climb” high onto it.
Step 2: In a mixing bowl, combine all white batter ingredients.
And beat them until soft peak, as explain very clearly step-by step here. After the process, you got this, beautifully beaten meringue.
Step 3: Combine all yolk batter ingredients into another bowl.
And whisk them real good! Until all just combined, it will feel thick and heavy-handed.
Step 4: Using a fold technique (also explain here), add 1/3 of the meringue into the yolk batter.
You don’t have to be extra careful at this step because the point here is to start cooperating some air into the thick yolk batter and loosen them up.
Step 5: Add the just folded mix into the rest of the meringue.
Now, fold, very carefully and delicately, like you are caressing it with a rose. OK, not that light, but imagine handling a baby. You don’t want to break the precious air bubble that later helps with the cake fluffiness. See how after the folding, the batter still stiff and keeps its shape well?
Step 6: Fill the batter to the prepared cake tin, only to 2/3 its capacity. The cake will rise, highly, seriously, period. Don’t believe me. See next picture please.
Step 7: Now back it in a preheated oven for a good 50 min – 1 hour. This is what happened when you fill it to high. See? Don’t follow my bad example.
And you want to keep the temperature exact to 150 degree C because this is a very delicate cake, high temperature may force the egg white to expand hastily at the beginning but once you get it out of the oven, it will flatten miserably.
To stabilize the batter, low baking temperature and long baking time is the key.
The cake is ready when you see the top golden brown, the batter seem dry and stop expanding, and the edge slightly pulls away from the cake tin.
Step 8: Now carefully take the cake out of the oven, and flip it over only a system like below.
Why I did that? Because at this point, the cake is still very hot and its structure is weak, we need to aid it by taking away the gravity force toward the bottom, if you know what I mean. 😛 I can be very scientific sometimes.
Step 9: After 30-45 minutes, the cake is cool, it is time to invert it into the cooling rack. Simply run a thin knife along the side and flip it over again. See how tall and proud it stands.
Ok, this is it for now. Since this is a supplement step to my next exciting recipe, so it has been short and to the point. But really, you can do very creative thing with this recipe: jam, whipped cream, fresh fruit, ganache, buttercream even. One thing it cannot handle is cake ties and fondant. 😉 Leave those heavy babies to my sturdy yellow cake recipe over here.
What is the next exciting recipe, you ask? Tehe, this is the perfect combination with my Light Tiramisu, and that will the next recipe on this blog. 😉 I lost counting compliments and rave review on my light tiramisu.
It does not only taste great, it looks so cute as well. 😀
Until next time,
Rose.
