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

it's just like have you ever seen something so beautiful as like that perfect cartoon strawberry hey everyone i'm claire saphis today i am showing you a very straightforward and basic sponge cake although it is possibly the most versatile thing you can make and perfect for all the spring and summer fruit it is so much fun to eat it kind of like dissolves in your mouth sponge cake kind of can't be beat for its versatility and texture basically if you had to make one cake i think this would be it for me i was telling cece while you guys were out getting coffee that this recipe almost broke me this one was weirdly the hardest one of all of the recipes i i was a little cocky about this recipe i was like i did croissants i did bagels i did sourdough like how hard is a little sponge cake well the answer is very hard and complicated and i made this recipe so many times this is a recipe that's very simple in terms of the ingredients that it involves it's like eggs and sugar and flour and like not much else but because of that each individual ingredient and the proportion is so important and makes such a difference but i think that where it ended up is a place that is very achievable very makable and not intimidating and that was my goal so this recipe makes enough batter to bake a nice tall 9-inch cake or a jelly roll pan so i'm going to show you first in a 9-inch springform pan this recipe needs friction and contact with the pan in order to fully rise in the oven and not collapse so i'm not going to grease it i'm not going to line the bottom either that's important as well i have my oven on 325 with a rack in the center one thing i hate doing is using my stand mixer and whipping egg whites in it and then having to transfer those egg whites into a different bowl and then cleaning the bowl and then whipping something else it's very annoying to me so for this recipe all you need are two medium bowls preferably one that's sort of wide like this and a hand mixer with your beaters it's pretty important for this recipe that your eggs are room temperature however room temperature eggs are also harder to separate the yolk becomes more delicate it's easier to break and it's simultaneously very crucial that your egg whites have no yolk in them you won't have very clean separation because any amount of yolk in your whites will prevent them from whipping up the best thing is really to separate them cold and then let the two sit out so like i have eggs that i separated earlier and i have the yolks and the white separate and now they're room temp this is a style of cake that is lightened only with beaten egg so no chemical leavener that's something like a baking powder baking soda that's just to say that it's important that we create a very finely textured and very stable foam so one of the ways we do that is by using this little ingredient called cream of tartar it's an acid that basically helps to stabilize the egg whites as they whip then i'm going to add kosher salt it also helps with stabilizing the egg whites these egg whites will take about four minutes and so it's over the course of that four minutes i want to slowly increase the speed until i get to around medium high so the idea is to create a very light stable foam basically like making a meringue with your whites and then i'm going to fold it into the yolk mixture and it's really the whites that is going to give the cake its lift so it's creating all these really fine little air bubbles and then in the oven as that air heats up they expand and you get this really light beautiful cake so it's looking really light i get a little bit of a peak but like they droop so i'm going to keep going and i want to get firm peaks so this is what i would call a firm peak you can see that the peak is holding totally upright it's not drooping now i don't want to beat beyond this point because when you over beat egg whites they go dry and they get sort of lumpy they almost have like a curdled look to them and that's a very very difficult texture to incorporate into a batter now i'm going to move over to my egg yolks and no need to clean the beaters the whole point of doing the egg whites first is that i don't have to clean the beaters so i'm going to combine the egg yolks with the remaining sugar i'm going to start beating these on medium high and i want to get this to the point where it's very very pale and light and thick and it forms a ribbon so when we see a slowly dissolving ribbon we mean that it will sit on top of the surface before it settles back in so this is a nice ribbon one of the things that keeps i should say one of things the thing that keeps this sponge really flexible and not dry is the addition of oil so what i'm going to do is slowly stream this in while i'm mixing on like medium medium high and it's going to emulsify into my egg yolk mixture try to avoid hitting the beaters though as you stream the oil in because you'll kind of like whip it around the bowl it's very smooth and thick and light so the next step is to add half of my flour if it's really lumpy out of the bag sift it i did not sift it i was just like i don't want to stitch anything in this recipe every time i sift something onto a mixer like this i make lumps so i don't understand what the point is at this stage you want to mix actually as little as possible so just on low until the flower disappears okay that's it the water is to thin it out a little bit make the texture a little looser so that i can more easily incorporate the egg whites i've added the remainder of the flour and i'm just mixing on low until that disappears this next step is called folding folding anyone is it shit's creek fan can i say shit's creek on camera folding is a means 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 nice wide flexible spatula if you have one and it basically is taking what's on the bottom of the bowl and moving it to what's on top and that is basically combining what's in the bowl in a gentle way and then once i see that they're well incorporated i'm going to add half of what's remaining which is basically a third of the total still these are incorporating very easily because i didn't over beat the egg whites if you were to have over beaten them this would be hard because you would get like pockets of egg white that don't want to incorporate so it's a little streaky but i'm going to go ahead and add the remaining third of my egg whites and the idea here is that you are incorporating these as effectively as you can but with mixing the least amount possible you can see that the whole thing is like super moussey and light so i'm going to fold this until it's completely streak free so this is ready to go i'm gonna grab my pan and i'm just gonna pour it in and then this pretty much settles but i'm gonna use an offset spatula to just smooth out the surface and now the last step before i bake is i'm gonna tap this on the counter once or twice pretty firmly and basically this is going to pop any really large air bubbles this looks good i'm going to put it in the oven 325 don't open the door especially not in the first 20 minutes of baking because it needs that really consistent strong heat to rise to its full potential one of the sort of essential things you can do with sponge cake is to make a roll cake or roulade or swiss roll whatever you want to call it and i tried a quarter sheet a half sheet of 13 by nine 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 but basically it's a 10 by 15 pan has one inch size but literally a pan designed for a roll cake so no surprise there that it works really well i do want to line this with a little parchment so what i'm going to do is take some oil and i'm going to brush the only the bottom not the sides with some of the oil i'm not really greasing it all i'm trying to do is create a surface for the parchment paper to stick to and then go ahead and smooth it to eliminate any air bubbles that same recipe with four eggs and the two thirds of a cup of flour and all that that is the perfect size for this jelly roll and cut this guy went actually a little over 35 minutes but i'm looking for an evenly golden brown surface it's you know it smells like super delicious and and cakey and it should be springy to the touch in the center we're good so i'm going to take it out i am going to invert this pan onto a wire rack i want to cool this upside down because this cake is so light and at this point it's very very delicate because there's all this steam in there that if i were to let it cool upright it would collapse so i'm cooling it upside down and this is another very important reason why we didn't grease the pan and this is going to help maintain that really bouncy light texture it's actually nice to have the wire rack on top of the like range where there's even more air underneath so just make sure that it's elevated a little bit so that there can be air circulation and then the steam doesn't condense and actually i do the exact same thing with the jelly roll pan also cooling it inverted on a wire rack now that i have our sponge cakes cooled and ready to go i am going to assemble first the layer cake and this is going to be an extremely simple but extremely delicious strawberry layer cake so i really can't think of a better use for beautiful red jewel like in season strawberries i have one and a half pounds of whole strawberries [Laughter] i just set aside about a quarter of them and i actually picked out the ones that like look the least good and i'm going to use these to make a strawberry syrup this is a really cool technique and this is what i'm going to use to soak the cake and just coarsely chop them combine this with granulated sugar just toss all this together you want to make sure it's sealed pretty airtight i have a saucepan of very very gently simmering water and then this goes onto our saucepan the steam that's being generated underneath the bowl is going to like gently warm and that sugar is going to extract all of the juices and flavors from the berries and the idea is that this will give us a translucent like pure uncloudy bright red ruby syrup so so delicious all right so while that's going i'm going to slice the rest of my strawberries i was sort of particularly inspired by this style of cake called a fresier which is a french strawberry cake and it has layers of sponge and cream and berries this is a much simpler version of that i enjoy recipes where the ingredients are so great on their own and then perfect together that like i don't have to do anything else i don't think that this recipe should be anything fancier than what it is okay so now i'm gonna whip some cream i have one cup of heavy cream and one cup of mascarpone i tested the recipe with all different subs for mascarpone as well i did sour cream and creme fraiche it all works perfectly well i'm putting in a tiny bit of kosher salt just because i feel like dairy like that a little bit of salt will bring out a lot of the flavor so i'm gonna start this on low as it thickens i'll increase the speed you could do this by hand but we already had the hand mixer out from the sponge so again i'm kind of like in a period of deep love for my hand mixer i've actually found that cream whipped with a mascarpone or a creme fraiche tends to like set a little bit after you're done whipping it so i don't want to over whip this to firm peaks because then it just becomes too thick all right this looks really good if you're doing this in advance which you can because this type of cream doesn't really begin to fall or deflate put this in the fridge until you're ready to assemble so my strawberries let's check in on these you can see that there's this liquid that's starting to accumulate around the sides of the bowl i am going to give this a quick stir sometimes there can be a little bit of sugar that doesn't dissolve it kind of gets trapped on the bottom i don't want to stir it too much because stirring aggressively will cloud up the syrup and i want this really translucent red color i'm still waiting for the syrup to fully form and accumulate but in the meantime i'm going to unmold my cake and then i'm going to split it into two layers by cutting horizontally it's fully cooled so that's what we're looking for you want to really let it fully cool and so here is the sponge looks nice i have a really even golden color across the surface and now i'm going to unmold it the first thing i'm going to do is cut around the sides of the pan again we didn't grease it so i have to really make sure it's loosened all over now this is why i like a springform pan is because i can take off the outer ring like so so there we go now it's like a tiny bit lopsided i wonder if sometimes the ovens like aren't totally level so like you'll get a slightly taller side if you gently lift it should peel away the cake will be very clean you'll just have a very very thin film of cake left on the bottom of the springform pan you can see just a little bit of that film on here this is called torting this is basically splitting one thick cake layer into two or more thinner layers first work all the way around the cake and just make sort of a shallow score mark and so this mark will be a guide for me when i go to cut all the way through the cake what i love about this sponge cake is it's fully baked it holds its shape but it's really flexible and so this is going to make it really easy to roll up it's going to make it easier to transfer the layers it is seriously like a sponge in a good way so now i have everything ready to go my cake layers are split i have my sliced berries my whipped cream and now i'm just gonna strain my strawberry syrup and start to assemble everything i can press gently on the fruit but basically i don't want to extract too much from the fruit because this is going to make it cloudy like look at the color it's pretty amazing this ruby red strawberry essence syrup okay so the basic construction of this cake goes like this cake layer syrup soak layer of cream strawberries repeat with my syrup and my pastry brush i just dab it across the surface it's a finely textured cake so it just it absorbs syrup so well and it just becomes this sort of dissolve in your mouth kind of cloud so now i'm going to take about half the cream and just dollop it across the surface and then with my offset spatula go ahead and work that all the way across and up to the very edge of the cake i really want to make these berries a little bit shiny so this is not in the recipe but i'm going to toss them in a tiny bit of olive oil just enough to coat them and shine them up a little bit that looks much better i kind of want to arrange them in an even layer i don't want them to look too placed either just make sure you have like even coverage so i have my layer here and i'm going to place it cut side up the syrup absorbs much better when it's placed on the cut side because all those air bubbles are exposed and it pulls it into the cake and also i dab i don't brush if i were to brush i risk sort of tearing up the surface of the sponge and i don't want to get tons of crumbs all over the place so i'm just dabbing now just top with the remaining strawberries i don't want to over soak the cake i don't think that there's much of a risk of that with this but i like having like little dribbles of it down the cream or something as much as i want to cut into this i am going to actually put it in the refrigerator because i still want to assemble the raspberry roulade and then we'll come back and take a look at everything and give it all a taste i'm using the same basic like principles and philosophy that i use for the strawberry cake on the raspberry roulade which is simplicity i just want it to really be a showcase for the berries and the flavors and the cream and so it's a really really simple construction one thing i want to do though before i start to put it together is to get this sponge trained to be in that spiral here i have this gorgeous really flat level sponge so i'm going to cut around the sides i have that piece of parchment paper down underneath i have a clean kitchen towel and i'm dusting it with powdered sugar this is to prevent any sticking carefully invert the cake it should come right out then you can peel off the parchment i have it upside down because this is going to be more absorbent so this is the side we want to fill so i just fold up this one side of the towel and i'm not going to roll it tight i'm just going to roll it loosely and again this is to like train the cake so that it's an easier to roll up when i've added the fillings so i'm going to put this off to the side there's a raspberry layer and a cream layer so for the raspberry layer it's extremely simple it's just some fresh raspberries mashed together with some raspberry jam i like the concentrated and sweet tart flavor of the jam but i also like the fresh flavor and texture from the actual berries all right even though i was thinking the praises of the hand mixer i don't really feel like washing the beater so i'm gonna whip this by hand but it's pretty easy because it's not a really large volume of cream and same thing a little pinch of kosher salt and because of the powdered sugar that i'm using in the rolling and then the finishing of the cake i'm not adding sugar to this cream [Music] i really want to get my mixer out now i think i'm sorry guys i gave up it's just a question of like which form of laziness wins out the laziness of whipping the cream by hand and laziness of washing the beaters i'm going to take this cream all the way to firm peaks i needed to have a little more structure than it did for the strawberry cake because i really want the roulette to hold its shape and i don't want the cream to get squished out the sides all right we're good i'm ready to assemble so i'm going to unroll it it has cracked in some spots that's not the fault of the sponge that's my fault because i over baked it slightly so you can see now it has that curved look that's good that means it's going to be easier to roll up i'm going to put the raspberry layer all across the surface i'm going to leave a little bit of a border at the long end that's further away from me because that's going to sort of 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 any cream on that near edge because to get that spiral going it needs like a little blank spot and then once you have it rolled let it rest for a second on the seam it's really best if this takes a minute to set and by a minute i mean like one hour in the fridge and this is why i have it on a cutting board because now i can just lift the whole thing up i don't have to transfer it so into the fridge i think i'm going to start with the roulade i have these very generous slices right here i can sort of see that there is a very thin layer of cake where it's absorbed some of the raspberry juices and the cream looks so fluffy in the inside so i'm very excited to eat this i just don't think that there is a better combination at least in the dessert world than berries and cream it has yet to be beat seriously so good i have to i have to get it far away so i'll eat the whole thing but delicious and now i'm gonna try the strawberry cake i know that sponge is really well baked we have that strawberry syrup and just incredible fruit on top the way that like the layers all kind of seamlessly meld together it is so good this is maybe my ideal of a cake it's delicious damn it's so good what i love about the recipe is that once you get that technique and you get a little familiar with it and maybe you know you make a roulette you make a nine inch cake you can use it for endless other purposes into a birthday cake with just some chocolate frosting in between the layers especially just serve it on its own with like a little whipped cream it manages to stand alone and be delicious but also help to show off all these other flavors and ingredients so i think it's a great way to close out try this at home at least for now it's been really fun to show you these sort of fundamental pastry recipes and bread recipes from like you know a simple sponge cake to the most complicated french classic croissant so it's been a pleasure to teach you these recipes and thank you for watching you

Channel: NYT Cooking

Views: 587,811

Rating: 4.9660048 out of 5

Keywords: cooking, cooks, recipes, recipe, how-to, how to, kitchen, new york times, new york times cooking, nyt cooking, nyt, nytimes, claire saffitz, try this at home, Sponge Cake, Raspberry and Cream Roulade, roulade, jelly roll, raspberry, strawberry, Strawberry and Cream Layer Cake, berries, berries and cream, strawberries and cream, raspberries and cream, cake, baking, summer fruit, how to bake a cake, eggs, layer cake, claire saffitz layer cake, sugar

Id: N4nvGZTC9RE

Length: 19min 56sec (1196 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/jsmeeker]

I really like we get Claire in two different YouTuber series.. Her own and NYTs.

[u/Haunting_Way_816]

This is the last of the 4-part series, but hopefully they'll get her back for more. This series pairs well with her weekly channel uploads.

[u/cali_girl_79]

looks amazing but apparently i have to purchase a subscription just to get the recipe. that is well not going to happen. the nyt should release the recipe.