Italian Sponge Cake (Pan di Spagna) & My Baking Classes
Just when I feel like I know all that there is to know about a sponge cake, I come across a recipe for this beautiful, light and airy sponge that doesn’t have any butter, oil, baking powder or soda! It relies completely on how well you whisk the egg and sugar together. It’s essentially just eggs,
Servings Prep Time
8serving 20minutes
Cook Time
45minutes
Servings Prep Time
8serving 20minutes
Cook Time
45minutes
Ingredients
  • 5 eggs(roughly 50 gms each)
  • 150gms caster sugar
  • Pinch salt
  • lemonZest of medium sized Indian
  • 150gms cake flour* (see how to make it at home in note at end of post)
  • Icing sugar cake, for dusting the
  • Handful pomegranate seedsof
Instructions
  1. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Line a 9-inch springform pan with parchment paper and grease it with butter or oil spray.
  2. In a large bowl, or in the bowl of a stand mixer, start whisking together the eggs and caster sugar, then add the salt and lemon zest and continue whisk until the mixture is a pale yellow, glossy and voluminous (pictured above).
  3. In about 4 batches, sift in the flour and fold into the batter very gently with a silicone spatula, ensuring there aren’t any bits of unmixed dough.
  4. Pour the batter into prepared pan without tapping the batter or evening it out with spatula. Bake in pre-heated oven for 30 to 40 minutes. Don’t open the oven door for initial 20 minutes or cake will deflate. A toothpick inserted in centre of cake should come out clean when baked. When baked, leave the oven door open for 10 minutes (switch off oven) while the cake rests in the oven. Then cool on a wire rack completely before removing it from pan.
  5. Dust with icing sugar and top with handful of pomegranate seeds.
Recipe Notes

If you don’t have cake flour at home, then weigh out 150 gms of all-purpose flour in a bowl and remove 2 tablespoons of flour from this bowl. Replace this by adding 2 tablespoons of cornflour (as we call it in India) or corn starch. Now sift the flours together at least 3 times so that they are well incorporated.