Sponge Queen in Exile

I am not Australia's next Sponge Queen.  The Australian Women's Weekly ran a competition earlier this year to find Australia's Sponge Queen, which I entered.  The State semi-finalists were announced last month, and I'm not one of them.  And that's quite OK.  But I am disappointed I won't get to cook in the Women's Weekly test kitchen in Sydney, where the final is being held. The chance to cook in that kitchen was the main reason I entered.  It is the holy grail for bakers, where recipes are tested and cookbooks developed.

My generation grew up on Women's Weekly magazine style recipe books after they first appeared in the early 1980s. They are part of our history, reflecting the tastes and preferences of Australians, and our after-school and weekend rituals of helping Mum in the kitchen. They are the books we turned to after moving out of home, and when we needed a recipe we know would work.  Everyone has at least one Women's Weekly recipe book in their kitchen, and everyone knows about the AWW test kitchen. For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to go there and bake cakes.

I entered the Sponge Queen competition with a cornflour sandwich sponge recipe.  It is a recipe I use all the time as it is so light and airy, and consistently good. In fact, it featured in my very first post on this blog (for the Shortcut Dobos Torte).  Nonetheless, I tested and re-tested that recipe about 30 times before entering the competition, and made a few modifications.

Cornflour Sandwich Sponge recipe

4 eggs
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 cup cornflour
pinch salt
1 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda, sifted
2 drops vanilla essence
1 tbsp copha, melted
plain flour, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.  Brush the inside of each tin with the copha and dust with flour.  Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence together on a high speed for at least 10 minutes until thick and fluffy.  Add the cornflour, cream of tartar, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Gently fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture.  Divide the mixture evenly between the two sandwich tins.  Bake in the oven for 15 minutes. The sponges are cooked when they have come away from the sides of the tins, and spring back to the touch.

Tips

1.  The eggs should at be at room temperature for maximum aeration.  The eggs not only bind the ingredients together, but are the key raising agent. Aerated eggs = towering sponge of goodness.

2.  Whisk the eggs and caster sugar to the 'ribbon stage', which means that when you take the whisk out, a thick ribbon of mixture will fall back into the bowl.  Reaching the ribbon stage takes about 10 minutes on my Kitchenaid mixer.  The volume of the mixture trebles in size, and is pale and thick.  So thick, in fact, that if you put the dry ingredients on top of the mixture, they will stay there.

3.  When whisking to reach the ribbon stage, whisk for about 5 minutes on high speed, and then reduce the speed to medium for another 5 minutes.  This ensures that the air bubbles in the mixture are uniform, giving the mixture stability.  Large bubbles can burst during the cooking process, which results in a flatter sponge, and nobody wants to see that. Large air bubbles also rise to the top affecting the look of the surface of the sponge.

4. To sift or not to sift the dry ingredients?  I found that sifting the dry ingredients (except for the bicarbonate of soda, which does need to be sifted as it is lumpy) makes absolutely no difference to the end result. Controversial I know, but the key to a good sponge at this stage of the process is how you fold in the ingredients not whether you have sifted the ingredients.  A heavy folding hand removes the aeration and sifting the ingredients beforehand won't save you.  Be kind and gentle to your mixture and fold the dry ingredients in with a light touch.  I use a spatula so I can really get down to the bottom of the bowl and turn the ingredients over.  I find that using a large metal spoon doesn't get into all the nooks and crannies and you sometimes find pockets of dry ingredients when pouring the mixture into the tins.

5.  Speaking of tins, I use anodised aluminium tins with deep sides and a non-stick surface.  Notwithstanding they are non-stick, you still need to grease the inside of the tins and dust them with flour.  I found after careful testing of cohpa, sunflower oil, unsalted butter and lard, that melted copha is the best.  It will give your sponge smooth sides and a smooth bottom every time.  EVERY time.

So there are my tips from my test kitchen in suburban Perth.  Not quite the AWW test kitchen, but I'll get there some day.  A girl can dream.

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