In search of the perfect sponge 1

After last week baking craze, I've decided to search for the perfect sponge cake recipe. So, what consitutes a perfect sponge cake? In my humble opinion, the perfect sponge cake should be moist, fluffy and soft. It should be good enough to eat on its own and yet be able to transform nicely into a layer cake, ie firm enough to hold the weight of the filling.

Japanese sponge cake (adapted from Notecook)

60 gm melted butter

80gm flour
80ml full cream milk / UHT milk
6 egg yolks + 1 egg (depending on the size of the egg, 5 egg yolks will be sufficient with bigger size eggs).
1 tsp vanilla essence
6 egg white (or 5 bigger size eggs)
90gm sugar
a pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 170C (I used 160C fan)
2. Beat 6 egg yolks and 1 egg until creamy, approximately 5 minutes.
3. Add in flour and alternate it with milk.
4. Add in melted butter & vanilla essence and mix well. Set aside the egg yolks batter.
5. In a clean mixing bowl, whip egg whites with sugar and salt until soft peak.
6. Fold the egg white mixture into egg yolks batter gently till well combined.
7. Pour the mixture into a slightly greased and lined 8” square baking pan
8. Bake for 35 minutes or until the skewer comes out clean.
9. When the cake is out from the oven, let it sits for 2 minutes before unmolding it.

The cake rose magnificently in the oven and was looking very promising. However, it shrunk quite a bit when cooled. The texture of the cake is nice and soft, actually cottony as described. However, not as fluffy as I like it to be. Further more, the addition of vanilla essence did not mask the eggy taste.

Was too lazy to dress the cake and since it was good enough to eat on it's own, decided to serve it with freshly whipped cream (with vanilla paste) and blueberry compote instead. Blueberry compote was made by heating 2 cups of frozen blueberries + 1 tbsp sugar + squeeze of lemon for 5 mins.