Ingredients
4 Large Eggs (200g)
400g Castor Sugar (2 cups)
237 ml/1 cup Whole Milk
112g Unsalted Butter
1 Tbsp Vanilla Extract
260 g All Purpose Flour (You may sub in cake flour here at 250g)
10 g Baking Powder (2 teaspoon)
2 g Salt (1/4 teaspoon)
You will need:
2 x 8 inch tins
A big cake mixer
A handheld hand-mixer
1 bowl
Mix Method
Preheat oven to 350°F/170°C. Line your tins with baking paper. The Eggs should be at room temperature.
Sieve the flour and baking powder and salt sifted together to aerate and lighten. Leave aside till needed.
In the bowl of your Kitchen mixer whip the room temperature eggs on high speed with the whip attachment until foamy, then gradually start adding in your sugar very slowly.
The eggs will take about 5 – 7 minutes to reach the ribbon stage, so in the meantime you can heat your milk and butter together in the microwave or on the stove top and reserve to keep warm- you will want to add this to the mixture as described in the liaison while it is still warm/hot.
The ribbon stage is a stage where the egg/sugar mixture is very light in colour, very thick and when you lift your whip attachment and the batter runs back into the bowl it makes a ribbon effect before disappearing back into the mixture. You can also do a “figure 8″ pattern with the mixture and if it stays visible for a few seconds before disappearing you know you have achieved ribbon stage.
At this point add in all of the dry ingredients at once with the mixer OFF first and then on low speed mix in the dry mixture. You can gradually go up to a higher speed to make sure it is all incorporated evenly.
Next you will prepare a liaison with the hot milk and melted butter mixture. A liaison is a technique in which rather than dumping the liquids straight into the main batter causing deflating of this delicate foam we took such care to achieve; you will take out about 2 cups of the cake batter into a separate mixing bowl, and with a hand whisk add the hot liquids to THAT 2 cups of batter. Whisk it all together and then proceed to add this liaison to the original cake batter in the mixer bowl. Do not beat but fold in with spatula to mix all.
Add the vanilla extract last and pour into prepared pans. Bake for 35 minutes and remove from the pans whilst hot. You can add in any colour or two colours - divide into two bowls before adding colouring.
NB: Please note if you cover your top baking tray of your oven (under the grill) with aluminium foil as some cake tops burn please remove this when making the sponge. If you do not it takes a long time to bake.
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