Cream Sponge with Strawberry

Simple Vanilla Sponge Cake 

Yes it can be simple to make a home made sponge. Theres a few tricks to making it light and fluffy but you can do it!

Ingredients:

6 eggs separated yolks from whites when cold (must be at room temperature when starting to prepare covered with plastic wrap in separate containers )

200g white caster sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

1 tablespoon of water

teaspoon of zest of lemon 

1 cup of sifted cake flour (lighthouse brand is my choice)

3/4 teaspoon of cream of tartar  (stabilises the egg whites from drying)

Cream for cake:

250ml cream heavy like double
1 tablespoon of caster sugar

Berries for top of cake eg. Strawberries or Blueberries and some icing sugar for the top sifted.

To make your sponge get two 25cm or 10 inch pans for cake baking.  I use butter to grease the pans and also use baking paper cut to size for the pans and more butter and some flour to dust into the pans.

Turn oven on to around 175 degrees celcius and make the tray in the centre of the oven fan forced.

Get a large bowl out and sift the flour x 3 times.  Add 1/4 cup of the sugar to the flour and mix up.

Place 1/4 cup of the sugar into a bowl and add the yolks and beat on high until they are really pale and thick (ribbon like falling back into the bowl) At this point beat in your vanilla essence and water and lemon zest.

Then you need to sift in the flour, sugar mixture from before. Do not fold in but sift in.

Now wash the beaters as you need to use them in the egg white mixture now. Make sure they are dry (beaters) as no water should get into this mix.   Mix the egg whites until foamy (can take up to 7 minutes or more sometimes) add the cream of tartar and keep beating until they are shiny and stiff peaks form. Gradually add 1/4 of the sugar and blend until shiny peaks form. Gently fold a little egg white into the batter to lighten it. Then add the rest of the whites folding until just incorporated.  This is important now to not overmix as this is where if we overmix here it wont be as volumed.   Pour batter into the pans making sure its pretty even in both.

Bake these pans for around 35 minutes or until you see light brown on them. A toothpick in the middle should tell you if its ready or not.  Cool a little before inverting out of the pans.

Then you can whip your cream while the cake part is cooling.  When cake is cooled fill with the cream and top with cream and fruit and dust with icing sugar on the top.  I also filled the lower level with strawberry jam.