Butter: Even though this isn't a butter cake, butter is an important and main ingredient. I recommend using Kerrygold Irish butter, or Costco has a great New Zealand butter. Both of these are my favorite types of butter to use for this cake. You can use salted or unsalted butter for this recipe. If you are using salted butter, you can omit the salt from the original recipe.
Mix Mix Mix: Another very important step in making this cake is the mixing. We want to incorporate the butter and sugar together for around eight minutes to ensure maximum fluffiness in our cake.
Sugars: In this recipe you can use granulated sugar, or cane sugar. The finer the sugar the easier it is to incorporate into the butter resulting in a light, airy and fluffy cake.
Equipment: You can of course make this cake by using a whisk, however for best results use an electric hand mixer or an electric standing mixer.
Cake. Oh sweet, fluffy, spongy, cake.
This sponge cake was inspired by my grandmother's sponge cake, she made the best sponge cake. The flavor, the texture, everything was exactly as it should have been for cake.
Now, I am a huge chocolate fan, but remembering this cake brought me back to happy places, sinking my teeth into a delicious - right out of the oven - warm bite of grandmas' cake, on a hot summer day. Ah, the simple times.
What it would be like again, not to have a worry in the world, but the enjoy the small and simple things, the simple moments, savoring the simple sweet joys.
With all that I had to recreate this cake. I had tried previously, it was one of my first cakes trying to recreate and the first time I tried, let me tell you was a huge fail.
But my heart never left that cake for over the many years of cooking and baking. I used that knowledge to come up with this cake. It's as close to grandma's sponge cake as I can get for now.
We all know grandmothers measured with their hearts, and it's what I had to do as well. There wasn't a written recipe for me to follow. Just follow my heart. It led me to this recipe which I am about to share with you.
We hope you can share it and pass down memories of simple joys and simple sweet moments together. I truly hope you enjoy it and let us know if you did and who you shared this with!
More delicious recipes:
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8 oz butter softened (1 cup or 2 sticks)
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1 and 1/4 cup of granulated sugar
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4 large eggs
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2 tbsp vanilla extract / mixed essence orange or lemon zest
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1 and 3/4 cup of cake flour
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1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon
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1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
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2 tsp baking powder
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1/8 tsp salt
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1/2 cup of whole milk
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Butter and flour for coating Pan
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F
1. In a large bowl cream your butter until smooth.
You want to start off with some good quality butter. This is the base layer of the cake, and we want some good quality butter for a richer taste.
2. Add in your sugar, and on medium speed on your hand or standing mixer start to cream your butter and sugar.
3. After 1 minute scrape the bottom and sides of your bowl.
4.Cream butter and sugar.
5. Cream butter and sugar.
6. Cream butter and sugar.
That wasn't a typo.
This is a crucial step.
7. Cream butter and sugar for 5 - 8 minutes, after every minute scrape the bottom and sides of your bowl bringing the mixture back into the center.
8. When your mixture is thick, pale and fluffy, add in your eggs, one at a time. After each egg mix until thoroughly incorporated.
9. Scrape bottom and sides of bowl often to make sure everything is being mixed well.
10. Add in your vanilla extract or mixed essence.
11. Grate in the zest of an orange or lemon.
Traditionally it was orange used but if you don't have orange, you can use lemon. You can also add 1 tsp of orange or lemon extract if that is all you have.
12. In a separate bowl, sift together your dry ingredients: cake flour, salt, baking powder, ground cinnamon and ground nutmeg.
13. Grease you cake pan with softened or melted butter. All the way around the sides and bottom rub the butter to coat.
14. Add in 1 tbsp of flour to the bottom of the cake pan and shake all-around the bottom and sides.
15. In increments of 3, add in your flour and your milk, making sure not to over mix. Add 1/3 of flour, 1/3 of milk, mix and continue until all flour and milk are incorporated.
16. Pour batter into floured pan.
17. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes until lightly golden on top and edges gently pull away from pan.