Today we are making Genoa sponge cake. This is absolutely my favorite sponge. It's very light and fluffy and goes with so many desserts and you can arrange once you know the basics. There are definitely crucial steps to make it very fluffy and silky so I'll show them step by step just now.
Let's get started. And here is the ingredients we are using today. Eggs, Glanier sugar, cake flour, milk, oil and vanilla extract. You can combine milk, oil and vanilla extract in advance.
You can also use a whisk to mix the ingredients. Set aside. And I also like the sift flour ahead. And by sifting the flour, you can eliminate flour lumps in the sponge and also contains a little bit more airs or around flours as you do it, which results in a little bit more fluffier texture.
And set aside. So now in a bowl, we're gonna crack eggs. Add your sugar. and give them a quick mix. Alright, so it started boiling.
I'm gonna stop and place the bowl on top and constantly mix. Keep doing this until this egg mixture is nice and warm. Alright so now it's nice and warm so I'm going to take it out and keep whipping really really hard with high speed until this gets super fluffy. By warming up eggs it whips up a lot more easier with shorter time.
Today I'm using cake liners so that the sponge comes out really easily. I love it because it saves up a lot of my washing time. Watch this video to see how you can make them for a lot more shapes and sizes. One of the biggest mistake for general sponge is not whipping enough at this point. When it's not whipped enough, it will not rise up enough and it's not going to be as fluffy as you want it to be.
Now the eggs are whipped up a lot and look so fluffy. When you drop it, drop something and stays on the surface like this, it is whipped enough. But it's not done yet. In the end, lower the speed and mix slowly for another few minutes at least or even five minutes or so.
By doing this, the air bubbles get smaller and create more silky texture without having a lot of big holes inside once it's baked. When you do not do this, the result is dramatically different. You'll see a lot of air holes and the texture will be more rough. So don't skip this part. Check again if you can draw something and stays on the surface.
You should throw like this with that speed. A lot of people stop whipping way earlier and that's one of the biggest reason why the sponge does not rise. Add flour right away and mix with cut and fold motions like this. By mixing like this, you don't kill too much air inside but still be able to mix well. Make sure to scrape off the bottom and sides and mix evenly as you do it.
Once you don't see any more flours, you can stop and add your liquids right away. For sponge, once liquids and oils are added, the air bubbles are going away much much faster. So you want to mix quickly, pour in a pan quickly and put in oven quickly to keep the best condition. And how much you mix in the end is very very important to make fluffy but silky sponge. When you don't mix enough in the end, it rises up a lot but the texture is left because it contains too much air bubbles inside.
When you mix too much, on the contrary, it does not rise up enough and it will not be fluffy because the air bubbles are killed too much. Drop it with a spatula and check. When it looks like this, it is not dined.
Let's mix more. I'm showing how much I mixed with no cut so that you can judge by yourself when you make it. Let's check again.
Looking good. Now it froze much faster. Remember the speed and thickness.
Quickly pour in pans. Today I'm using two 6 inch which is 15 centimeter but you can do one 8 inch which is 20 centimeter instead with the same batch as well. Now you see darker colors on the surface that are not evenly mixed.
Mix with spatula like that to even it out. And this is also very important, toss the pans like this before you bake to remove some big air bubbles. When you do one 8 inch instead of two 6 inch, it takes a lot longer to be baked.
It really depends on the oven, but it is about 35 minutes with the same temperature. Judging if it's baked enough is also very important. I want you to hear the sound and see how bouncy it looks as I do it. It makes a slight bubble sound, but it should bounce back enough. It's almost done but did not bounce back enough when I touched it.
It left a kind of deep dent. Now you still hear the sound but I feel nice resistance and it springs back very gently. I always take it out from the oven when it still makes sounds because you do not need to bake all the way since it still gets cooked with the remaining heat in room temperature. When a little over 95% is baked, you can take it out.
Once it's done, toss like this to remove some steam so that it stays flat. and flip and let it cool like that to keep a better shape. Once it's cooled enough, remove cake liners and it is ready to be used. This sponge does not contain a lot of oil to keep the moisture, so it can be easily get dried after a few days or so.
I recommend to store in a freezer if you don't use up within one or two days or use within 24 hours for the best taste. Since I'm from Japan where strawberry shortcake is the most popular dessert, I could say I grew up with this sponge. It brings up my childhood memories such as my birthdays, my first cake, my favorite pastry shops, and so on. When you store, wrap it tightly all over. I usually like to store with parchment papers still on.
So today I'm using olive oil because that's the only oil I have at home. I use olive oil for everything but you can use regular vegetable oil. And usually instead of oil we use butter but today I use oil.
Sometimes I do butter. Sometimes I do oil. Sometimes I do half and half.
It really depends on what kind of dessert I'm making and what kind of texture I want that day. So with oil, the texture gets a little bit more lighter and it creates slightly more volume like chiffon cake. And with butter, it gets slightly more heavier and creates this amazing smell and when you use butter make sure that the your butter is nicely melted and it's warm when you add it in the butter because if your butter is not warm enough and butter gets hardened as you mix and it creates this solids so this sponge cake is made by whipping the whole eggs together and that's the method of Genoa's cake on a contrary when you whip egg whites and yolks separately and combine them together later in the end that's the method of biscuit sponge. I explained about the topic a little bit further in my biscuit sponge tutorial.
So to learn even deeper about sponge cakes, definitely check it out after this video. Thank you so much for watching this video all the way to the end. I really appreciate it. Give this like and subscribe to my channel if you haven't yet and let me know what kind of dessert you want me to make using this general sponge as always stay safe and keep baking and I'll see you in my next video