Do the words "hot milk sponge cake" make you want to yawn and move on or does it sound like a throwback that you just want to get up and make? For me, it's the latter since I love simple everyday cakes. I can again thank browsing through magazines for how I learned about this one.
Hot milk sponge cake falls in the category of foam cakes - the kind where the cake's lift comes predominately from whipping eggs until they're, well...foamy. In some cases of sponge cakes, egg whites and yolks are separately whipped and no additional fat is added; in other instances, like with a genoise, you have whole eggs and additional yolks that are whipped together to a foamy texture before some butter or oil gets incorporated. In comparison to chiffon cakes, sponge cakes are less rich, with less fat, and their spongy texture make them great candidates for soaking up syrups for things like layer cakes or for rolling into a roulade. That's how I understand it anyway...the lines between the variety of sponge cakes and recipes can be blurry. All I know for sure if that basic sponge cakes always appeal to me.
So about hot milk sponge cake. I'd never heard of it before stumbling upon it in a magazine recently. It's made here with whole eggs as well as a few additional yolks. Given my love of eggs and egg-rich cakes, that works for me! A little baking powder ensures lift and a mixture of hot milk and a little melted butter folded into the batter at the final step creates a light and springy cake that's also rich in flavor and sturdy enough to handle.
This recipe from Alice Medrich I found offered three ways to turn this base hot milk sponge cake into various desserts with fillings. Sponge cakes are a great blank canvas for that but the options didn't appeal to me because I generally like to keep sponge cakes at their most basic as a simple at-home snack cake. But I started thinking (uh-oh)...and got the notion of putting a caramelized almond topping on the cake like the topping on this (very delicious) almond semolina cake.
Well...as I was placing the topping on the cake, it dawned on me that the topping might very well sink into the batter as the cake rises in the oven. I would have allowed the cake to bake a bit before adding the topping but since the cake is done in about 20 minutes, I didn't think there was time for that. In the end, I crossed my fingers and I'd say the outcome was moderately successful.
It wasn't quite how I had envisioned it, and as you can see, there were a few pockets of heavier almond clusters that did sink into the cake. However, all was not lost. The almonds added flavor and a little extra sweetness (since they were coated with some egg whites and brown sugar), and definitely made the cake more interesting and flavorful without any other adornments. That's good enough for me and I'll count that as another experiment, another lesson in the kitchen!
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| Hot milk sponge cake, in which I attempted to place a caramelized almond topping (with moderate success) |
So about hot milk sponge cake. I'd never heard of it before stumbling upon it in a magazine recently. It's made here with whole eggs as well as a few additional yolks. Given my love of eggs and egg-rich cakes, that works for me! A little baking powder ensures lift and a mixture of hot milk and a little melted butter folded into the batter at the final step creates a light and springy cake that's also rich in flavor and sturdy enough to handle.
Well...as I was placing the topping on the cake, it dawned on me that the topping might very well sink into the batter as the cake rises in the oven. I would have allowed the cake to bake a bit before adding the topping but since the cake is done in about 20 minutes, I didn't think there was time for that. In the end, I crossed my fingers and I'd say the outcome was moderately successful.
P.S. - My little blog got a mini makeover! I hope you like it as much as I do.
