Perfect Passover Sponge Cake

I've achieved sponge cake nirvana.  This is a light and moist sponge cake -- so delicious that you won't even notice the lack of butter and flour.  It is the perfect Passover dessert.

After my two recent failures, I was especially pleased that this cake was a success. The recipe, handwritten on a page of an old calendar, was given to me by Arthur Schwartz who inherited it from his mother.  In addition to the wonderful texture, the cake has a lovely citrus note from the lemon and orange zest and juice.

It's important to begin with room temperature eggs.  If you've just arrived home from work and your eggs have been in the fridge all day, no problem.  Just place them in a bowl and cover with warm water for a while while you prep the other ingredients.

Chop the nuts (or chocolate) and zest and juice the fruit.

Measure out the cake meal and potato starch.

Beat the yolks for a long time ("beat yolks good" says the recipe) until light in color, then add the sugar and beat the mixture even more until the yolks become very light in color.  (Do not let the sugar and eggs sit in the bowl without mixing, for the sugar will "cook" the eggs and you'll end up with small bits of scrambled egg.) Mix in the citrus and the dry ingredients.

When this is finished, turn your attention to the egg whites.  Beat until stiff peaks form.  I always add some cream of tartar at the beginning to avoid overbeating the whites. While separating the eggs, one of the yolks broke and some got into the whites.  I carefully spooned it out and, as you can see below, didn't have a problem.  (Egg whites can be finicky when fat or grease gets in the mix.)

Carefully fold the whites into the batter, using a large spatula. Combine until there are no visible white streaks.

Pour into a 10-inch tube pan.  No need to grease the pan, but based on my previous cake fail experiences, I put a round of parchment paper on the bottom for added insurance. (Not sure it was needed.)  Smooth out the top and pop in the oven, which you've preheated to 325 degrees.  You should preheat the oven for at least 20 minutes to ensure it reaches the proper temperature.

When the cake is done, invert it until cool. (My pan has "legs" but if yours doesn't, simply place it atop a wine bottle.) Then turn upright and run a knife around the outside edges to loosen the cake from the pan.

I shared the cake with the ladies at Henry Street's Home Planning Workshop, below, where Ruth Taube, second from left, has been teaching knitting, sewing and crocheting to neighborhood residents since the 1960s!  She's in her late 80s and still going strong.

The recipe is below.  I used about one cup of chopped walnuts.  Next time, chocolate!  The "cake flour" refers to cake meal, available this time of year.

I'm lucky enough to work on Manhattan's Lower East Side, home of the Streit's matzoh factory and snapped these pictures (exterior of the shop, Passover cake mixes and matzohs hot off the press) when I purchased the cake meal there.  

Not Another Cake Wreck!

Oops, I did it again.  Only worse.  This mess is *supposed* to be Arthur Schwartz's family's sponge cake, one that both his grandmother and mother made every year for Passover.  So I can't blame the recipe.

I was thrilled when, a few months ago, Arthur handed me a folder filled with handwritten family recipes. For years, I've cooked and baked from recipes Arthur posts on his own blog, FoodMaven.com; all have worked beautifully and so I was especially excited to bake from his own family recipes.

It started out just fine. Below is the mis en place.  Just four ingredients -- eggs, sugar, lemon and potato starch.

The first disaster occurred when I poured the batter into the nine-inch removable bottom tube pan that I had purchased at a flea market.  As the batter leaked from the bottom and onto the table and floor, it became all too clear why the pan cost only $1.

I quickly transferred the remaining batter into a solid tube pan and crossed my fingers.  (And tossed the flea market "find" into the recycling pail.)

The cake rose beautifully in the oven and the aroma was so good that even the DS, home for the night, remarked on it.  After 40 minutes, the cake seemed done so I removed it and, as per the instructions, inverted the pan until the cake was cool. That's when the "fun" began.  Unlike my most recent debacle, where the inverted cake (still warm) fell onto the counter with a thud, this one wouldn't budge. Using one knife to loosen the cake from the pan, and another to bang hard on the top, I attempted to release it, creating so much noise that the DH rushed downstairs to check on all the kitchen commotion.

It finally did release, but in five easy pieces.  And the top of the cake had a weird, rubbery texture, something I'd never seen and hope never to again.

What went wrong?  A couple of things. Not having the right pan, for starters.  And, looking back, the whites didn't whip well.  I used the Kitchen Aid instead of an electric hand mixer (my go-to for this). There was some liquid remaining in the bottom of the bowl and, while the whites were stiff, they seemed to lack volume as I was folding them into the yolk mixture.  I also think it could have baked a bit longer. And maybe, just maybe, I'm not meant to make sponge cakes -- this isn't the first struggle I've had with them.

Here's the recipe, written in Arthur's mother's beautiful handwriting. The "Mom" refers to her mother.  I may try it again or, more likely, make another from Arthur's collection. Though the pieces of cake that I salvaged were very, very good. Light-as-air texture and a wonderful lemon flavor. Too bad the rest of the cake was heavy-as-lead.

April Fool's Dessert: Fried Egg on Toast

I despise duplicity and deception (but apparently not alliteration) except on April Fool's Day.  So, I bring you a delightful kitchen-born practical joke -- and a delicious one!

The fried egg on toast pictured above is trompe l'oeil at its best.  In fact, it is a canned half peach surrounded by whipped cream on a slice of sponge cake.  I found this gem of  a recipe in a 1956 spiral bound cookbook (simply called Cook Book) published by the women of Circle "B" of the First Brethren Church.  

I'm not publishing a sponge cake recipe because the one I made did not come out well.  Very low rise, which is fine in jeans but not in cake.  If you want to fool friends and family, I think a slice of pound cake would do nicely.  (Meantime, I'll be baking my way through dozens of sponge cake recipes in my collection until I find one worthy of 2012.)

Today's April Fool's joke is reminiscent of a trick I played on my son when he was in middle school (and that I recreated below).  Instead of his usual bacon and eggs for breakfast, I served him bacon and gummy candy fried eggs.  (He didn't complain -- candy for breakfast was quite a treat!)