Sponge Cake Recipes Are Lying to You
A 3-minute whipping time is too good to be true.
Five minutes, 3 minutes—time and again I’ve come across recipes with whipping times that seem too good to be true. Genoise cakes, joconde and other foam-based sponges rely on fully whipped eggs for lift, lightness and flexibility—and that’s no quick feat. Our Portuguese Pão de Ló cake, for instance, requires fully whipped eggs and sugar to achieve its signature billowing look, but what exactly does “fully whipped” mean? The whipping time is just a single guideline. To prevent dense, under-aerated cakes, check for reliable visual cues.
Why whip eggs for cake?
Baking powder, baking soda and yeast might be the big three leaveners, but plenty of recipes call on eggs to provide lift. This makes sense: Eggs have the ability to bind and moisten while providing volume and structure to baked goods, so why wouldn’t you use them for cake? Certain cakes, like the ones mentioned above, are partly or completely leavened with aerated eggs, likely because these recipes have been around since before chemical leaveners existed. If there are downsides to consider, they’re fairly minimal: Some extra time spent whipping, for one, plus the fact that eggs present a bigger variable than a teaspoon of baking powder.
What do fully whipped eggs look like?
Whipped egg whites have a distinctive system of peaks (and you can read more about manipulating meringue here) but whipped whole eggs or egg yolks act differently. In recipes like these, whole eggs or egg yolks are added to a mixing bowl with sugar, which aids in stabilization. This simple combination gets beaten with a whisk attachment (ideally with a stand mixer, but you could do it by hand) until it reaches the right stage of aeration.
When done correctly, the eggs enter the ribbon stage. Not every recipe will involve this stage—for instance, those that use a combination of baking powder or baking soda may call for slightly whipped eggs. And those recipes that do enter the ribbon stage will indicate or describe it. This stage gets its name from how the eggs fall from the whisk when it’s removed from the mixture—they’re so thick and fluffy they look like “ribbons.” There’s a bit of poetic license at play here, but the mixture does indeed leave a discernible trail that piles up and barely sinks back into the pool. Whether this can happen in 5 minutes or less on medium-high speed is a different question—and the answer is, "not usually."
Reaching Ribbon Stage
Even under the most favorable of circumstances, reaching the ribbon stage can take 10 to 20 minutes. The best way to increase volume as quickly as possible is to start by warming up your mixture over a bain marie, or double boiler set-up. Get a small pot of water simmering and place your metal mixing bowl with eggs and sugar on top of the pot, without the pot touching the water. While the steam quickly heats the bottom of the pot, whisk it continuously for about two minutes. You’re not pasteurizing it, just giving it warmth. You can check that warmth by hand or, if you have one on hand, a thermometer; the desired temperature is about 100°F to 110°F.
The eggs will look watery and dark yellow, with some foam clustering on the surface. Set the stand mixer up with the whisk attachment and begin beating the eggs. Start at medium-high speed. You want to quickly incorporate air without causing the eggs to splatter out of the bowl. After 5 to 7 minutes, the eggs should look fluffy and light in color. This might seem like a tempting place to stop, but it’s still a few minutes short of the ribbon stage.
Whack up the speed to high, and let this go for another 5 minutes or so, depending on your mixer. This is when you’ll start to see the final transformation. The eggs will get extremely thick, with finer bubbles, and will grow even paler in color. You’ll start to see grooves in the wake of the whisk. When you stop the mixer and lift the beater out of it, you’ll see the trail (ribbons) gather on top, and they won’t readily disappear back into the rest of the mixture. It’ll look almost like golden whipped cream or marshmallow—resist the urge to scoop it up and eat it.
A timer is just one part of the process here: you also have to factor in the number of eggs you’re using, the type of mixer you have, and whether your eggs are cold or warm. Test your egg foam before moving on to the next step and you’ll notice a significant difference in the lightness and fluffiness of your sponge cakes.
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Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Allie Chantorn Reinmann is a Digital Staff Writer for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. She’s a Thai-American chef who earned her diploma for Pastry and Baking Arts at The Institute of Culinary Education and worked professionally for over a decade honing her craft in New York City at places like Balthazar, Bien Cuit, The Chocolate Room, Billy’s Bakery and Whole Foods. Allie took her know-how from the kitchen to the internet, writing about food full-time at Lifehacker for three years and starting her own YouTube channel, ThaiNYbites. You can find her whipping up baked goods for cafés around Brooklyn, building wedding cakes and trying her hand (feet?) at marathon running. She’s working on her debut cookbook and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
