The Sponge Cake That Can Do It All With Claire Saffitz | Try This at Home | NYT Cooking

It's like they've ever seen something as beautiful as that perfect cartoon strawberry. Hello everyone, I'm Claire Saphis. Today I show you a very simple and basic

cake

, although it is possibly the most versatile thing you can make and perfect for everyone. Spring and summer fruit is very fun to eat, as if it dissolves in your mouth. An unbeatable

cake

for its versatility and texture. Basically, if you had to make a cake, I think

this

would be it for me. I was telling Cece, while you guys were having coffee, that

this

recipe almost broke me. This was strangely the most difficult of all the recipes.

I was a little cocky with this recipe. I was like I made croissants, I made bagels, I made sourdough. how hard is a good cake the answer is very hard and complicated and I made this recipe so many times this is a recipe that is very simple in terms of the ingredients involved it is like eggs and sugar and flour and like not much else but because of That, each individual ingredient and the ratio are very important and make a big difference, but I think where it ended up is somewhere very achievable, very easy to make and not intimidating, and that was my goal, so this recipe makes enough dough to bake a nice tall 9 inch cake or jelly roll pan, so I'll show you first in a 9 inch springform pan.

This recipe needs friction and contact with the mold to rise completely in the oven and not collapse. I'm not going to grease it, I'm not going to cover the bottom either, that's also important. I have my oven at 325 with a rack in the center. One thing I hate doing is using my mixer and whipping egg whites. and then having to transfer those egg whites to a different bowl and then clean the bowl and then whisk something else, is very annoying for me, so for this recipe all you need are two medium sized bowls, preferably one that is wider like this one, and a hand mixer.

With your beaters, it is very important for this recipe that the eggs are at room temperature, however, eggs at room temperature are also more difficult to separate, the yolk becomes more delicate, it is easier to break and at the same time , it is very important that the egg whites do not have yolk. I don't have a very clean separation because any amount of yolk in the whites will prevent them from whipping, it is best to separate them cold and then let them both sit, just like if I had eggs that I separated before and I have the yolks and the whites separate and now they are at room temperature this is a style of cake that clears itself with beaten egg so there is no baking powder which is kind of like baking powder baking soda that's just to say that it's important that we create a very fine texture and very stable foam, so one of the ways we do it is by using this little ingredient called cream of tartar, it's an acid that basically helps stabilize the egg whites as they're whipped, then I'll add kosher salt, it also helps stabilize the egg whites these egg whites will take about four minutes, so over the course of those four minutes I want to slowly increase the speed until I get to a medium high level, so the idea is to create a very light, stable foam, basically like make a meringue. with the whites and then I'm going to incorporate it into the yolk mixture and it's really the whites that are going to give the cake its lift, so it's going to create all these very fine little air bubbles and then in the oven as the air heats up. they expand and you get this beautiful really light cake so it looks very light I get a little peak but they fall down so I'm going to go ahead and I want to get firm peaks so this is what I would call a firm peak you can see that the peak stays completely upright, it's not drooping now I don't want to beat beyond this point because when you beat too much the egg whites dry out and become a little lumpy, they almost have a curdled look. them and that is a very, very difficult texture to incorporate into a dough.

Now I'm going to move on to the egg yolks and there's no need to clean the beaters. The point of making the whites first is that I don't have to clean up. the beaters, so I'm going to combine the egg yolks with the remaining sugar. I'm going to start whisking them on medium high heat and I want to get to the point where it's very, very pale, light and thick and forms a ribbon. So when we see a slowly dissolving tape, we mean that it will sit on the surface before settling back down, so this is a pretty tape, one of the things that keeps, I should say, one of the things that keeps this really flexible

sponge

. and not dry is the addition of oil, so what I'm going to do is pour this in slowly while I mix on medium, medium high and it will emulsify into my egg yolk mixture, although try to avoid hitting the beaters as I pour in the oil because you'll like to whisk it around the bowl, it's very smooth, thick and light, so the next step is to add half of my flour, if it's lumpy outside the bag, sift it.

I didn't sift it. It was as if I didn't want to sew anything in this recipe. Every time I sift something in a blender like this I make lumps so I don't understand what the point is at this stage, you actually want to mix as little as possible so just on low heat until the bloom disappears, okay that's it That's all, the water is to dilute it a little, make the texture a little looser so that you can incorporate the egg whites more easily. I added the rest of the flour and just mix on low until it disappears, the next step is called folding, fold anyone, are you a fan of the shit creek?

Can I tell the shit stream on camera? Folding is a way of mixing something very gently obviously that's what we want to do here because we don't want to deflate and liquefy the egg whites otherwise our cake will bake flat and dense use a wide flexible spatula if you have one and it's basically taking what's at the bottom of the bowl and moving it to what's on top and that's basically combining what's in the bowl gently and then once I see that they're well incorporated I'm going to add half of it. What remains is basically a third of the total, yet these are incorporated very easily because I did not beat the egg too much. whites if you had beaten them too much, this would be difficult because you would get like pockets of egg white that don't want to be incorporated, so it's a little bit streaky, but I'm going to go ahead and add the remaining third of my egg. whites and the idea here is that you incorporate them as effectively as possible, but by mixing as little as possible you can see that everything is like super moussey and light, so I'm going to fold this until it's completely streak-free, so this is ready , I'm going to take my pan and pour it in and then this will set, but I'm going to use an offset spatula to smooth the surface and now the last step before baking.

I'm going to hit this on the counter once or twice pretty firmly and this is basically going to pop very large air bubbles. This looks good. I'm going to put it in oven 325. Don't open the door, especially not in the first 20 minutes of baking because it needs that really constant, strong heat to reach its full potential. One of the essential things you can do with cake is to make a cake roll, a roll, or a Swiss roll whatever you want to call it. and I tried a 13 by nine quarter sheet and half sheet and really the perfect size is a special pan called a jelly roll pan, although I think a lot of people probably have them anyway without knowing it, but basically it's a 10 inch pan. by 15. size in inches, but it's literally a pan designed for a roll cake, so it's no surprise that it works very well.

I want to line this with some parchment, so what I'm going to do is take a little bit of oil and brush the Just the bottom, not the sides, with a little bit of oil. I'm not really greasing it, all I'm trying to do is create a surface for the parchment paper to adhere to and then go ahead and smooth it out to remove any air bubbles. recipe with four eggs and two-thirds of a cup of flour and all that, that's the perfect size for this jelly roll and this guy cut it actually took a little over 35 minutes, but I'm looking for an even golden surface, you know .

It smells super delicious and cakey and should be springy to the touch in the center. We're fine, so I'm going to take it out. I'm going to invert this pan onto a rack. I want to cool this upside down. because this cake is very light and at this point it's very, very delicate because there's all this steam in there that if I let it cool upright it would collapse so I'm cooling it upside down and this is another very important reason why I don't I greased the pan and this will help maintain that light and really bouncy texture.

It's actually nice to have the grate on top of the stove where there's even more air underneath so just make sure it's raised a little bit so there can be air circulation and then the steam doesn't condense and I actually do exactly the same with the jelly roll pan and I also cool it inverted on a rack now that I have our biscuits cooled and ready to go, I'm going to First assemble the layer cake and this is going to be an extremely simple but extremely strawberry layer cake. delicious, so I really can't think of a better use for a beautiful red gem like seasonal strawberries.

I have a pound and a half of whole strawberries. I just set aside about a quarter of them and actually picked the least good looking ones and I'm going to use them to make a strawberry syrup. This is a really cool technique and this is what I'm going to use. soak the cake and chop it coarsely combine this with granulated sugar just mix all of this together you want to make sure it's sealed tightly I have a saucepan with simmering water and then this goes into our saucepan the steam that's being generated under the bowl goes It's going to be slightly warm and that sugar is going to extract all the juices and flavors from the berries and the idea is that this is going to give us a bright red, pure, clear, clear ruby ​​syrup, so delicious, okay, as long as that's it, I'm going to cut the rest of my strawberries.

I was particularly inspired by this style of cake called fresier, which is a French strawberry cake and has layers of

sponge

cake, cream and berries. This is a much simpler version of I enjoy recipes where the ingredients are so good on their own and then perfect together that like you don't have to do anything else, I don't think this recipe should be anything more sophisticated than is okay , so now I'm I'm going to whip up some cream. I have a cup of heavy cream and a cup of mascarpone. I tried the recipe with all the different mascarpone substitutes.

I also made sour cream and creme fraiche. Everything works perfectly. I'm putting a little kosher. salt just because I crave dairy so a little bit of salt will bring out the flavor a lot so I'm going to start this on low heat as it thickens I'll increase the speed. You can do this by hand, but we already had. the hand mixer out of the cake, so again I'm like in a period of deep love for my hand mixer. In fact, I found that whipped cream with mascarpone or creme fraiche tends to solidify a little after you.

I'm done whipping it, so I don't want to beat it too much until it has firm peaks because then it gets too thick. Okay, this looks great if you make it ahead of time, which you can do because this type of cream really doesn't. start to droop or go flat, put this in the refrigerator until you're ready to assemble, so my strawberries, let's check these out. You can see that there is liquid that is starting to pool around the sides of the bowl. I'm going to give it a quick review. Stir sometimes there may be a little sugar that doesn't dissolve and gets trapped at the bottom.

I don't want to stir it too much because stirring aggressively will cloud the syrup and I want this really translucent red color. I'm still waiting for the syrup to completely form and build up, but in the meantime I'm going to unmold my cake and then divide it into two layers by cutting it horizontally, it's already completely cooled so that's what we're looking for. You really want to let it cool completely, so here's the sponge. You can see it well. I have a very uniform golden color on the entire surface and now I am going to unmold it.

The first thing I'm going to do is cut around the sides. In the mold again we didn't grease it, so I have to make sure it loosens completely. This is why I like a springform pan because I can remove the outer ring like this, so there we go, it's like a little bit. crooked I wonder if sometimes the ovens are not completely level so you will get a little bit higher side if you lift it gently it should come off the cake will be very clean you will just be left with a very thin film of cake. at the bottom of the springform pan you can see just a little bit of that film here, this is called cake, this is basically dividing a thick layer of cake into two or more thinner layers, first work around the cake and make a sort of a shallow scoring mark, so this mark will be a guide for me when I go to cut the whole cake.

What I love about this cake is that it is fully baked, it holds its shape but is very flexible, so this is going to make it really easy to roll, it will make it moreeasy to transfer the layers, it's really like a cake in a good way, so now I have everything ready, my cake layers are divided, I have my sliced ​​berries, my whipped cream and now I'm going to strain my strawberry syrup and start to assemble.all i can press gently on the fruit, but basically i don't want to extract too much of the fruit because this will make it cloudy, look at the color, it's pretty amazing, this ruby ​​red strawberry essence syrup is fine, so the basic construction of this cake is like this layer of cake soak in syrup layer of cream strawberries repeat with my syrup and my pastry brush I simply rub it on the surface it is a fine textured cake, so it absorbs the syrup very well and dissolves in your mouth it's like a cloud, so now I'm going to take about half of the cream and just spread it over the top and then with my offset spatula, I'm going to go ahead and work that along and to the edge of the cake.

I want these berries to shine a little, so this is not in the recipe, but I'm going to toss them in a little bit of olive oil just enough to coat them and give them a little shine, that looks much better. I want to arrange them in an even layer, I don't want them to look too layered either, just make sure I have even coverage, so I have my layer here and I'm going to lay it cut side up, the syrup absorbs much better when layered on the cut side because all those air bubbles are exposed and it draws it into the cake and I also rub it, I don't brush it, if I brush it I risk breaking the surface of the cake and I don't.

I want tons of crumbs everywhere, so I'm just rubbing it in now, just top with the remaining strawberries. I don't want to make the cake too soggy. I don't think there's much risk of that happening with this, but like having little drops in the cream or something, as much as I want to cut into this, I'm actually going to put it in the refrigerator because I still want to put the raspberry roll together and then we'll come back and take a look at everything and try it. I'm using the same basic principles and the same philosophy that I use for the strawberry shortcake in the raspberry roll, which is simplicity, I just want it to really showcase the berries and the flavors and the cream, so it's a really very simple construction.

One thing I want to do before I start putting it together is train this sponge to be in that spiral. Here I have this beautiful really flat level sponge, so I'm going to cut around the sides, I have that piece of parchment paper underneath, I have a clean kitchen towel and I'm dusting it with powdered sugar, this is to prevent it from sticking , carefully invert the cake, it should come out fine and then you can remove the parchment. I have it inside out because it's going to be more absorbent, so this is the side we want to fill, so I'm just folding this side of the towel over and I'm not going to roll it up tight, I'm just going to roll it up. loosely and again, this is to train the cake to be easier to roll when I added the fillings, so I'm going to set this aside, there's a raspberry layer and a cream layer for the raspberry.

The layer is extremely simple, it's just some crushed fresh raspberries along with some raspberry jam. I like the concentrated, sweet and sour flavor of the jam, but I also like the fresh taste and texture of real berries, although I was thinking about the praise of the hand blender I really don't feel like washing the blender, so I'm going to beat this by hand, but it is quite easy because it is not a very large volume of cream and the same, a pinch of kosher salt and because of the powdered sugar that I am using to roll it and then to finish the cake.

I'm not going to add sugar to this cream. I really want to get out my mixer now. Sorry guys, I gave up. It's just a question of what form. From laziness wins the laziness of whipping the cream by hand and the laziness of washing the beaters. I am going to bring this cream to firm peaks. It needed to have a little more structure than for the strawberry cake because I really want the spinner to keep its shape and I don't want the cream to squish on the sides, okay, we're good, I'm ready to put it together, so I'm going to unroll it.

It has cracked in some spots, that's not the fault of the cake because I baked it a little too much so you can see now it has that curved look, that's good, that means it will be easier to roll. I'm going to put the raspberry layer all over the surface. I'm going to leave a little edge on the long end that's furthest from me because that's going to seal and finish the spiral. Now I'm going to use the towel to help me roll this up so you can see why. I didn't put cream on the near edge because for the spiral to work you need a small blank dot and then once you've rolled it up, let it sit for a second on the seam.

It's really better if it takes a minute to settle. and by minute I mean an hour in the refrigerator and that's why I have it on a cutting board because now I can lift it all up and I don't have to transfer it so to the refrigerator I think I'm I'm going to start with the roll. I have these very generous slices here. I can see that there is a very thin layer of cake where some of the raspberry juice is absorbed and the cream looks very fluffy inside, so I am very excited to eat this, I just don't think there is a better combination, at least in the world of desserts, that berries and cream, has not yet been seriously surpassed, it is so good that I have to take it away, so I will eat. everything but delicious and now I'm going to try the strawberry cake.

I know that the cake is very well baked. We have that strawberry syrup and amazing fruit on top. The way they, like the layers, blend together perfectly, is so good. This is perhaps my ideal cake, it's delicious, damn it's so good. What I love about the recipe is that once you learn that technique and get a little familiar with it and maybe know that you make a spinner, you make a nine-inch cake. You can use it for many other purposes, such as a birthday cake with just a little chocolate frosting between the layers, especially serve it alone with some whipped cream.

It manages to stand on its own and be delicious, but it also helps showcase all these others. flavors and ingredients, so I think it's a great way to end, try this at

home

at least for now. It has been very fun to show you these types of fundamental pastry and bread recipes, from a simple sponge cake to the most complicated French one. classic croissant so it has been a pleasure to show you these recipes and thanks for watching