This is the most velvety soft sponge cake you will ever bake. It is so moist and has a tender crumb, and it’s the perfect celebration cake. Start by preheating your oven to 180C/350F, then grease and line two square cake tins with parchment paper. Sift your dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, starting with 300 grams of plain all-purpose flour, a quarter cup of cornstarch, half a teaspoon of baking powder, and half a teaspoon of salt.
Using a whisk, mix that until it’s well combined, then set the dry ingredients on the side. In a small bowl, combine one cup of room-temperature milk and one teaspoon of white vinegar; vinegar is excellent for getting that velvety texture in cakes. Give that a mix and set it aside. Next, separate egg whites from the egg yolks of 6 large eggs, for this recipe we will only be using the egg whites, so you can cover the egg yolks and place them in the fridge and use them for something else.
Into a large bowl, combine half a cup of room temperature unsalted butter, half a cup of unflavoured vegetable oil, and one and two-thirds cups of white granulated sugar. Using a hand or stand mixer at medium to high speed, cream that together until it’s light and fluffy. Next, add the egg whites in four batches and mix each batch well before adding the next. Do this with your mixer at low speed.
Add a quarter tablespoons of vanilla essence and half of the milk vinegar mixture from earlier. Mix that on a low speed until it’s well combined. Add half of the dry mix, switch to a spatula, and fold until combined. Add the remaining milk-vinegar mixture and fold it until it is combined. Then, add the remaining dry ingredients and fold until combined.
You didn’t want to overmix the batter, so fold until there aren’t any lumps or streaks of flour in the batter. Now, you can add sprinkles, chocolate chips, or fruit to your cake and fold them. Evenly distribute the batter into the prepared cake tins and bake them in the oven for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs.
Serve this cake the way it is, or go ahead and make an easy vanilla buttercream and top it with it.
Ingredients;
- 2⅓ cups (300 g/ 10.6z) flour – regular all-purpose (see note 1 if you want to use cake flour)
- ¼ cup (25 g) cornstarch
- 2½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt – omit if using salted butter
- 1 cup (240 ml) milk – room temperature
- 1 tsp white vinegar
- Six large egg whites – room temperature, size seven eggs
- ½ cup (113 g/ 4Oz) unsalted butter – room temperature
- ½ cup (110 ml) unflavoured vegetable oil – I use canola
- 1⅔ cups (333 g/ 11.7Oz) white granulated sugar
- 1¼ tbsp vanilla essence/extract
