Devo mettere il lievito nel Pan di Spagna?

No, se eseguite correttamente la montatura delle uova, non serve mettere il lievito nel Pan di Spagna. L’aria incorporata nelle uova, sarà sufficiente a farlo crescere in cottura.

Posso usare la Fecola nel Pan di Spagna?

Sì, potrete sostituire fino al 10% del peso della Farina con della Fecola o con un altro amido (amido di riso o di frumento), così da avere un Pan di Spagna più “fine”. L’aggiunta degli amidi può anche essere usata nel caso abbiate a disposizione una farina troppo proteica; in questo modo limiterete la formazione di glutine.

Meglio cuocere il Pan di Spagna con il forno statico o ventilato?

La cottura migliore del Pan di Spagna si ottiene con il forno statico ed a prendo leggermente lo sportello del forno durante gli ultimi 10minuti di cottura, così da farlo asciugare.

Perché il Pan di Spagna si è sgonfiato una volta sfornato?

Molto probabilmente la cottura non è avvenuta correttamente ed il Pan di Spagna non era perfettamente cotto . Vi consiglio di fare la prova dello stecchino e verificare che uscirà asciutto e senza briciole attaccate!

Posso usare la farina 1, invece della 00?

Sì, si può preparare un’ottimo Pan di Spagna usando una farina semi-integrale di ttipo 1 . In questo caso dovrete correggere il contenuto di liquidi, aumentando il peso delle uova di circa il 10% (dipende molto dalla farina che utilizzerete).

Posso congelare il Pan di Spagna?

Sì, basterà avvolgerlo nella pellicola alimentare e riporlo in un sacchetto per congelatore. Potrete conservare il Pan di Spagna congelato a -18°C fino a 60giorni.

Come faccio a fare il Pan di Spagna al Cioccolato?

Per un Pan di Spagna al CIOCCOLATO (e non al cacao) dovrete sostituire 100gr della farina della ricetta con 200gr di cioccolato fuso tiepido . Per non smontare la massa, vi consiglio di mescolare il cioccolato alla farina e successivamente aggiungere circa 1/3 della massa montata di uova. Quando il composto sarà ben amalgamato (si smonterà un pò, ma è del tutto normale), aggiungetelo al resto della massa di uova. Il Pan di Spagna al Cioccolato tende a seccare più rapidamente!

Quanto cacao devo aggiungere per il Pan di Spagna al Cacao?

Per preparare un Pan di Spagna al Cacao, potrete sostituire 100gr della farina con 10gr di cacao , setacciandolo insieme alla farina (restante) della ricetta.

Le uova per il Pan di Spagna devono essere fredde?

La temperatura delle uova non influisce sul risultato finale , ma piuttosto sul tempo che impiegherete a montarle. Le uova fredde appena uscite dal frigorifero saranno più viscose ed impiegheranno più tempo per montare. Al contrario usare le uova a temperatura ambiente (oppure portandole a 50°C) monteranno molto più velocemente.

Perché il Pan di Spagna è cresciuto storto nel forno?

Il Pan di Spagna ha sviluppato troppo glutine , probabilmente lo avete lavorato troppo, una volta aggiunta la farina, oppure avete usato una farina troppo "forte". Un’altra causa potrebbe essere una cattiva distribuzione del calore all’interno del forno.

Il Pan di Spagna sa di uovo? Cosa posso fare?

Se il Pan di Spagna è ben eseguito e ben cotto, non dovrebbe avere il sentore di uovo. Se tuttavia preferite limitare questo gusto, potete aggiungere 1 cucchiaio di aceto di mele alla montata di uova.

SPONGE CAKE

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WHAT IS SPONGE CAKE?

Have you ever made a sponge cake? For you will at least once! You probably don’t know it, but the sponge cake and cupcakes are part of a larger family of pastries called Whipped Cakes.

Sponge Cake is called so because of its foamy structure prepared with eggs, sugar, and flour, to which you can add some fat that helps make the final product finer. Butter is undoubtedly the most common fat used to prepare whipped masses such as cupcakes!

Like all whipped cakes, sponge cake is characterized by a high air content, responsible for its light and fluffy structure. The element that allows the sponge cake to incorporate air is the egg itself, thanks to its proteins (the egg white and the yolk), which can form many air bubbles.

MY RECIPE FOR TRADITIONAL SPONGE CAKE

Here is one of the main basics of Italian Pastry. A good sponge cake must be soft, aerated, and fondant in the mouth.

The secret to preparing it in the best way is to obtain a well-whipped mass and to be very careful not to break it up when incorporating the flour.

Once ready and cooled, you can store the sponge cake in the freezer at -18°C (0°F) for about 2 months, closed in plastic bags.

Print Recipe

Preparation: 30

Cooking: 20

Total Time: 50

RECIPE FOR: 8 People

EQUIPMENTS

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Stand Mixer
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Cake Pan

Ingredients

500 gr Eggs
300 gr Granulated Sugar
200 gr All-Purpose Flour
100 gr Potato Starch
5 gr Salt
1 pod Vanilla
Lemon Zest

DIRECTIONS

Beat the eggs at fridge temperature with the sugar in the mixer on medium speed until the mass grows about 5 times its initial volume.
You can check that the mixture is ready by lifting it up with the whisk and letting it fall back into the bowl. If the mixture stays on the surface for a bit, then the mixture is ready.
Sift flour and starch 2 times and add to egg mass with a spatula mixing from the bottom up.
Fill buttered and floured cake pans to ¾ of the height, taking care to level the edges before baking.
Bake at 180°C (356°F) for about 22 minutes.
After baking, remove the sponge cake from the mold, sprinkle it with granulated sugar, and turn it upside down to uniform the surface. Cool immediately to +4°C (39°F) to maintain the humidity inside the product.
If necessary, you can store the sponge cake in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap, for about 2 weeks!

NUTRITION LABEL

ADDITIONAL INGREDIENTS

Starches: Using starches hinders the formation of gluten and allows for a more crumbly texture. For reference, you can substitute up to 50% flour with starches (potato starch or rice starch).

Dried Fruit in Flour: Besides characterizing the sponge cake’s taste, excessive use of dried fruit may dry the cake. To limit this inconvenience, you can replace 50gr of flour with 150 grams of dried fruit in flour.

Butter: As seen before, the butter enhances a crumbly and dense structure. However, butter must not exceed 50% of sugar’s weight to avoid the mass losing its structure.

Yolks: For a more refined structure, you can add yolks to the recipe’s eggs, up to 1/3 of the weight of whole eggs (if the recipe requires 300gr of whole eggs, you can add up to 100gr of yolks). Let the whole eggs whip in the stand mixer and add the yolks after about 10 minutes.

Cocoa & Chocolate: To prepare an excellent chocolate sponge cake, add

Cocoa: Replace 100gr of flour with 10gr of cocoa carefully sifted

Melted chocolate: Replace 100gr of flour with 200gr of melted chocolate. First, combine whipped eggs (eggs + sugar), warm chocolate, and flour. When all the ingredients are well blended, add them to the sponge cake dough. In this case, I also recommend adding a small amount of honey to the recipes, preventing the chocolate or cocoa from drying out the sponge cake too much.

STORAGE

Once baked, you can freeze the sponge cake. Wrap it in plastic sheets, place it in food-grade plastic bags, or store it well covered at +4°C (39°F) for ten days.

Chocolate Sponge Cake

TRY THIS

Sponge Cake Roll

TRY THIS

HOW TO MAKE SPONGE CAKE – 4 TECHNIQUES

We can prepare Sponge cake by whipping the whole egg or yolk and egg white separately. The choice of the two methods also depends on the structure you want to obtain. A greater volume of air in the dough translates, in fact, in a more incredible lightness in the baked sponge cake.

There are four different techniques of making sponge cake: 2 WARM and 2 COLD.

1. WARM METHOD: Very light and honeycombed structure, but it will tend to dry out sooner

Bring sugar and eggs to 50°C (122°F), stirring constantly. Then whip at medium speed in a stand mixer with a whisk (or electric whips) until the mixture is puffy and bubbly. Finally, add the flour sifted twice. Once ready, pour the mixture into a buttered and floured mold and bake in a static oven at 180-190 °C (356°F – 374°F), keeping the oven door slightly ajar during the last 10 minutes of cooking.

While whipped, this sponge cake develops a high volume but raises too much in the oven. Its honeycombed structure makes it unsuitable for soaking with liquor or syrup.

2. “MARGHERITA” METHOD: This is an Italian technique where we add some melted butter to obtain a more crumbly and delicate structure and a smaller alveoli.

Heat the sugar and the eggs at 50°C (122°F) and whip them in a stand mixer or using electric whips. Add some sifted flour (about 90% of the recipe quantity) when the mixture is bubbly. To better amalgamate the butter and not get the dough to collapse, I suggest taking a small part of the mixture (about 10%) and separately adding the melted butter and the remaining flour. Once the mixture is homogeneous, you can pour it into the dough, mix from the bottom up, and bake as above.

3. COLD METHOD: Finer and more compact structure, suitable for soaked or rolled cakes.

Whip the sugar and eggs in a stand mixer (or with electric whips) until they reach about five times the initial volume. Then, add the sifted flour twice and any flavorings (vanilla extract, lemon zest, etc.). Pour the mixture into a buttered and floured mold and bake as above.

4. DOUBLE METHOD: Very honeycombed and light structure like Charlotte or Italian Savoiardi.

Whip the egg yolks with 2/3 of the sugar and the egg whites with the remaining sugar separately. When the two compounds are ready, incorporate the meringue (white egg) into the yolks, alternating with flour and mixing from the bottom up. For simplicity’s sake, you can start by adding a portion of the flour (about 1/4) into the yolks, mixing it all, and then adding a meringue, stirring from the bottom up. When the mixture is well blended, repeat the operation until you finish the flour and meringue (I recommend doing this four times).

CREATE YOUR SPONGE CAKE RECIPE

In sponge cake, the egg is our unit of measure for the proportions between ingredients. The recipe is simple because it consists of only three elements: eggs, sugar, and flour.

Good quality flour with low protein content (W about 130-150 if you live in Europe, or an All-Purpose Flour in the US) is very important for an excellent Sponge Cake. However, if you only have strong flour (such as bread flour), you can replace 10% of its weight with potato starch to limit gluten formation. We are quite lucky for the sponge cake because most of the flour on sale in supermarkets is low in protein. Let’s make sure, however, that it is of good quality and contains nothing but flour (e.g., no baking soda)

In the recipes below, the measurement unit is 50gr, the average weight of a regular egg. However, I recommend weighing the eggs because their weight can differ significantly depending on the size you buy.

LIGHT SPONGE CAKE

It has a very honeycomb structure.

Eggs 50gr
Granulated Sugar 20gr
Flour 20gr

MEDIUM SPONGE CAKE

Good quality sponge cake suitable for being soaked

Eggs 50gr
Granulated Sugar 35gr
Flour 35gr

HEAVY SPONGE CAKE

It has a very compact structure and is suitable for “shaped” like Anglo-Saxon cakes.

Eggs 50gr
Granulated Sugar 50gr
Flour 50gr

ROLLED SPONGE CAKE

It has a flexible structure suitable for being rolled up.

Eggs 50gr
Sugar 35gr
Inverted sugar or honey 10gr
Flour 30gr

This recipe contains around 30% more sugar than the average recipe. If you notice, that’s a special sugar called Inverted Sugar (such as honey), which can retain the product’s humidity and give it more color during baking.

I REPLAY YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT SPONGE CAKE

Do I need to add baking powder to the sponge cake?

No. If you whip the eggs correctly, you do not need to add baking powder to the sponge cake. The air incorporated in the eggs will be enough to make the sponge cake rise during baking.

Can I use potato starch in the sponge cake?

Yes, you can replace up to 10% of the weight of flour with potato starch or another starch (rice starch or Maizena) to have a “finer” sponge cake.

The addition of potato starches can also be useful if you have a flour that is too rich in proteins; thus, you will limit gluten formation.

Is it better to bake the sponge cake in static or fan oven?

The best way to bake the sponge cake is to use a static oven and slightly open the oven door during the last 10 minutes of baking to evacuate the steam.

Why did the sponge cake deflate when out of the oven?

Most likely, the sponge cake was not perfectly cooked. I suggest you make a test using a toothpick and verify if it comes out dry and without any crumbs attached!

Can I use semi-wholemeal instead of finely-ground flour?

Yes, you can prepare an excellent sponge cake using semi-wholemeal flour. In this case, you will have to revise the liquid content of the recipe, increasing the weight of the eggs by about 10% (accordingly to how rich in proteins the flour is).

Can I freeze the sponge cake?

Yes, simply wrap it in a food wrap and then in the aluminum foil. Finally, place it in a freezer bag. You can store frozen sponge cake at -18°C (0°F) for up to 60 days.

How do I make chocolate sponge cake?

For a CHOCOLATE sponge cake, you have to replace 100gr of the flour with 200gr of warm melted chocolate. I suggest you mix the chocolate with the flour and then add about 1/3 of the whipped egg mass. When the mixture is well blended (it will slightly follow, but that’s completely normal), add it to the rest of the egg mass.

Pls, note that the Chocolate Sponge Cake tends to dry out faster!

How much cocoa should I add for making the Cocoa Sponge Cake?

To prepare a Cocoa Sponge Cake, you can replace 100gr of the flour with 10gr of cocoa, sifting it together with the (remaining) flour in the recipe.

Why did the sponge cake grow sideways in the oven?

The sponge cake has developed too much gluten. You probably overworked it once you added the flour or used a flour too rich in proteins.

Another cause could be the inadequate heat distribution inside the oven.

Does the sponge cake taste egg? What can I do?

If the recipe is well balanced and the sponge cake is correctly baked, it should not have any egg taste. However, if you prefer, you can add 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to the egg mixture.