Sponge cake is easier to cook with than it looks. Here's how to choose, use, and store it, what to substitute, and 22 recipes to get you started.

What is sponge cake?

Sponge cake is a foam cake: its rise comes from air whipped into eggs rather than from baking powder or soda. Beat eggs, or yolks and whites separately, with sugar until they triple in volume and turn pale.

Fold in flour, and the trapped air sets into a light, springy crumb in the oven.

That structure makes it the lightest of the classic cakes, drier and less rich than a butter cake. The dryness is a feature, not a flaw.

A sponge is built to soak up syrup and cream, which is why it forms the backbone of trifles and tiramisu.

You will see two main styles. A genoise folds whole eggs and often a little melted butter for flavor; a French biscuit whips the yolks and whites apart for an even airier, butter-free crumb.

Baking a Sponge

The whole cake depends on the foam, so beat the eggs and sugar until the batter falls in a thick ribbon that holds its shape for a few seconds. That is your leavening, and there is no chemical backup if you rush it.

Fold the flour in gently with a spatula, cutting down through the center and lifting up and over. Stir hard and you knock out the air you just spent ten minutes building, and the cake bakes dense.

Bake at around 350°F (175°C) until the top springs back when pressed lightly and the edges just pull from the pan. Then stop.

An overbaked sponge turns dry and tough, and since it has little fat to hide behind, there is nothing to mask it.

Building Desserts With Sponge

Sponge rarely stands alone. Its job is to carry other flavors, and it does that better than any richer cake.

Soak it first. Brush or drizzle the layers with a flavored syrup, coffee, or liqueur so the dry crumb drinks it in and turns moist and aromatic. This is the engine behind a Classic Tiramisu with Zabaglione and a Sherry Trifle.

Then layer it. Split a sponge into thin sheets for a trifle like Raspberry Truffle Trifle, line a bowl to make an Amaretto Cream Filled Cake (Zuccotto Ripieno), or stack it with ricotta for a Cassata Napoletana.

You can also roll it. A thin sheet sponge baked in a shallow pan stays flexible while warm, so you can spread it with filling and roll it into a jelly roll or roulade before it cools and cracks.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Because it is mild and a touch sweet, sponge pairs with almost anything: berries and stone fruit, whipped cream, custard, chocolate, coffee, and nut creams all sit naturally against it, as in a Godiva Strawberry Torte.

The biggest mistake is deflating the batter, from overmixing the flour or from letting the whipped eggs sit before you fold. Get it into the pan and the oven promptly.

The second is greasing the pan for cakes meant to climb high, like a chiffon or angel-style sponge. The batter needs to grip the bare sides to rise, so those pans go in ungreased.

A genoise baked in a round pan, by contrast, does want a lined and greased base for a clean release.

Substitutes and Storage

If a recipe calls for sponge and you have none, ladyfingers are the readiest swap, since they are simply piped sponge batter and slot straight into a tiramisu or trifle.

Pound cake or angel food cake can stand in when layered with syrup and cream, though pound cake is far denser and richer. A plain store-bought sponge flan base or jam-roll works for quick trifles.

Sponge stales fast because it is low in fat. Keep an unfilled cake wrapped airtight at room temperature for a day or two, or freeze it well wrapped for up to a couple of months.

Once it is soaked and assembled into a dessert, refrigerate it and eat within a few days.

Quick facts

In Chinese

海绵蛋糕

British (UK) term

Sponge cake

en français

gâteau de Savoie

en español

bizcocho esponjoso

Recipes using sponge cake

There are 22 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 22 recipes