Different Sponge Cake Flavours (no April Fool, it's after 12pm)

Yes, it is April Fool's day, but I got up late today and thus missed the 12pm cut-off for practical jokes. Although, not many people know this is a rule.

And so, we move onto how to flavour the basic sponge cake recipe. Last week I uploaded a blog on a coffee cake, so I thought I'd be kind an tell people how to make the normal vanilla flavour sponge into a coffee sponge, and various other kinds of sponge. In the picture, there is a vanilla cake, a coffee cake and a chocolate cake for sake of demonstration.

The following changes are specifically for the three-egg quantity as explained in the basic sponge cake recipe. If you've changed the amount of cake mixture, the alterations will need to be changed accordingly. To jog your memory, here is the recipe again.

• 4 ounces (115 grammes) white spelt flour

• 2 ounces (55 grammes) cornflour

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 3 medium eggs, at room temperature

• 4½ ounces (130 grammes) caster sugar

• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence (preferably the pure and natural kind)

• 1½ ounces salted butter (if lactose intolerant, see notes); if using unsalted, add ¼ teaspoon of salt to the flour.

• 1½ ounces sunflower oil

• 3 tablespoons (45 milliliters) hot water

If you want an orange, lemon or other citrus cake, take 1 whole citrus and grate off its zest. You want only the orange or yellow outer layer of skin, not any of the white bit underneath – known as pith – because it’s very bitter. Add this to the eggs and sugar before beating. Instead of the hot water, add the same amount of the citrus juice or a mixture of citrus juice and hot water if you want a less intense flavour.

If you would like a chocolate cake, replace 1 ounce of the white flour (not corn flour) with 1 ounce of cocoa powder. Because coca powder is very dry, add an additional tablespoon of hot water. This makes a very rich, dark chocolate cake, so if you don’t like it as dark you can reduce the substitution, or use hot drinking chocolate power, which is sweeter. Also, for a fudgier taste, you can replace half of the caster sugar with soft brown sugar, or even a mixture of caster sugar, brown sugar and golden syrup. Only replace 1 ounce of sugar with golden syrup, though, otherwise weird things happen.

If you would like a coffee cake, replace the milk with the same amount of very strong black coffee, either made with instant espresso powder or from a filter. If you want even more coffeeness, you can replace 2 teaspoons of the white flour with ground coffee beans, or replace the vanilla essence with coffee essence, or both if you’re truly coffee mad.

For toffee or caramel cake, simply replace the caster sugar with soft dark brown sugar, and then also replace one ounce of the sugar with one ounce of golden syrup (only 1 ounce, as aforementioned). If you can get it, you can use butter-vanilla flavouring instead of the vanilla essence; I managed to get a few vials of such flavouring from Lidl, and it adds a lovely note.

For any kind of berry or soft fruit cake, such as strawberry, banana or raspberry, replace the water with the same quantity of fruit purée. You can make this by squidging fresh or defrosted frozen fruit through a sieve. For extra special fruitiness, you can replace one ounce of sugar with the same quantity of fruit jam put through a sieve.

For coconut cake, replace 1 ounce of the plain white flour with desiccated coconut, and the water with the same quantity of coconut milk or juice. In Ireland, coconut milk comes in both liquid and solid form, so if you can only get your hands on solid form, dissolve it in hot water to make up to the quantity needed. Coconut cake is one of my especial favourites, especially with nice pillowy icing on it.

For spiced cake, you don’t need to replace flour with spices, you just add the spices to your dry ingredients at the beginning and sieve them as well. I tend to add a maximum of 2-3 teaspoons total of ground spices, whether you want to add 2-3 teaspoons of one spice (which is quite extreme), or a mixture of spices that amounts to 2-3 teaspoons (as in ½ a teaspoon of cinnamon, ½ a teaspoon of ginger, ¼ a teaspoon of coriander, et cetera).

For Queen cakes, which is basically a vanilla fairy cake with dried fruit in, just add 3 ounces of raisins or currants - tossed well in flour - to the mixture. You could also add chocolate chips for chocolate chip cakes, or even chopped crystallised ginger.

A nice idea for children’s parties (especially little girls) is to add 2 tablespoons of hundreds and thousands. This will make the cake spotty on the inside. Don't use dragées, as they are big and crunchy to find in a delicate little cake.

When adding colouring to your mixture, you can use either gel or liquid colouring, just not powder; it doesn't mix in properly. You can add up to 1 fluid ounce of liquid colour before a) the mixture starts to get too thin, or b) the colour is frightening deep/dark/nuclear. I don't really go in for colouring the actual cake, though, as I like to leave the cake natural and get my colour hit through the icing.

So go forth, and flavour!

Basic Sponge Cake (Wheat Free)

Behold the beauty; marvel at the moistness; love the lightness; and do an admiring-action-that-begins-with-'N' about the nommage. This is the Anna-Victoria Sponge (see what I did there?)

As a non-wheat eater, it's sometimes hard to find a recipe that works and tastes nice that doesn't contain wheat. I'm always massively underwhelmed by the 'free-from' products that can be bought from most supermarkets, and and similarly disappointed with gluten-free flour mixtures and taste and feel like dust. Now, I will stress that I'm lucky enough to not be full-on coeliac, and as such I'm not allergic to all kinds of gluten, I'm just intolerant to wheat. As such, I can use spelt flour, which is a God-send. So to my fully coeliac friends, spelt is not gluten-free only wheat-free, as mentioned in my last post. Don't use this recipe if you tend to have near-death-experiences when you eat gluten.

This recipe is very different from the usual fairy-cake/sheet-cake/birthday-cake recipe where the butter and sugar are creamed together and so on, because in my experience those kinds of cakes aren't as nice when made with spelt. So, there will be a few explanatory details thrown in with this recipe.

So, without further adon't, here's the recipe.

INGREDIMENTS:
This will yield one 7x9 inch (17x24 centimeter) rectangle, 7 inch (18 centimeter) round, or 8x4 inch (21x10 centimeter) loaf cake.

• 4 ounces (115 grammes) white spelt flour

• 2 ounces (55 grammes) cornflour

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 3 medium eggs, at room temperature

• 4½ ounces (130 grammes) caster sugar

• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence (preferably the pure and natural kind)

• 1½ ounces salted butter (if lactose intolerant, see notes); if using unsalted, add ¼ teaspoon of salt to the flour.

• 1½ ounces sunflower oil

• 3 tablespoons (45 milliliters) hot water

For the whys and what-fors, read the notes section at the end. If the scientifics don't bother you, bake away.

HOW-TO:

• Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F, Gas Mk.4, or moderate). If I turn my oven on directly before preparing the cake mixture, it's usually preheated by the time the mixture is ready.
• Prepare your tin for baking by greasing it on all sides then dusting with flour. Alternatively, you can line the tin with non-stick baking paper, or waxed paper. Here in Ireland, we have this marvelous sillicone-greased paper, and it works a treat.
• Sieve the spelt flour, cornflour, and baking powder (and salt, if using) into a bowl and set aside.
• In a little saucepan, or a bowl suitable for microwaving, melt together the butter and sunflower oil and set aside.
• In a large mixing bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar together with an electric hand mixer for about 4 or 5 minutes. It's ready when it is doubled in size, lemon-coloured, and leaves ribbon trails on itself when the beaters are lifted. If you don't have an electric hand mixer, you can use a balloon whisk, just set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Gently heating the egg mixture speeds up the process, and this means you won't snap off your arm by whisking for hours.
• Add the vanilla essence and, while still whisking, gradually pour in the melted butter and oil mixture.
• Sieve in half of the flour mixture and fold in using a spatula, balloon whisk, or metal spoon. Use any of these but please don't use a wooden spoon or electric beater: you WILL undo the last 10 minutes spent on getting air into the eggs and sugar.
• Fold in the hot water until fully incorporated, followed by sieving in the second half of the flour. Fold until just mixed.
• Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin, and bake in the oven for about 20 to 25 minutes. Don't be tempted to open the door until after three-quarters of the cooking time has elapsed: the cake will sink.
• Once 20 minutes is up, you can test the cake. If it's done, it should be springy to touch, set on top, and a cocktail stick or skewer stuck into the thickest part will come out with one or two crumbs sticking to it. You don't want the skewer to come out clean, because the cake will be too dry, but yet there should be no raw, liquidy mixture on the stick either. If it's not done, put it in to complete the whole 25 minutes; if it's not done after 25 minutes, your oven has a cold.
• When the cake is baked, let it cool completely in the tin. Once completely cold, you can decorate it however you like.

NOTES:

For the scientifically minded, the basic formula of this cake is: for every egg use 1 ounce of liquid fat, 1½ ounces of sugar, 2 ounces of flour, and 1 tablespoon of hot water. 1 teaspoon of baking powder is added for every 6 ounces of flour, or one can use self-raising flour.

A note on the flour: I use a mixture of 2 parts spelt flour to 1 part cornflour for two reasons. The now-first reason, which I discovered by accident while doing it for the what-is-now-the-second-but-was-the-first reason, is because the texture is way lighter and fluffier when cornflour is added. The now-second reason is because spelt flour is quite expensive and when I was in my poor student days, I wanted to pad out the spelt flour with a cheaper flour to save money. The fluffy texture was a serendipitous side effect of my frugality.

A note on the sugar: Caster sugar is the best for this because the grains are small and dissolve easily into the eggs as you're whisking. If you want, you can use a soft brown sugar, either replacing it completely or in part, just don't use coarse sugar, like Demerara or table sugar: the eggs just won't reach the same volume, and the cake will have a grainy texture.

A note on the butter and oil: When I say liquid fat, I mean fat that isn't in solid form, like room temperature butter or block cooking margarine. For the fat to be dispersed evenly throughout the cake mixture, I whisk liquid fat into the eggs and sugar, as opposed to creaming. However, the reason I don't use all oil is for a) flavour, and b) sturdy structure once the butter has returned to solid form after cooling the baked cake. If you don't want to use butter for whatever reason, you can use block margarine, just don't replace it all with oil.

A note on the shape and size of the cake: If you don't want to make one big cake, this recipe is ideal for fairy cakes. This three-egg quantity will yield 14 or so cakes, which is a weird number, but to make the usual 12 fairy cakes one would need to make a mixture from 2½ eggs, which is as akward as Hell. As such, I just make 24 cakes with a 5 egg mixture; simples.