The sponge cake is part of the classic recipes of Italian cuisine: it is the most used base in pastry and thanks to its texture, soft and light, it is particularly useful as a base for stuffed cakes, but it can also be used in other more preparations. complex, such as elaborate birthday cakes, special sweets, and so on.
In recent years I have tried various recipes to prepare sponge cake: there are those who recommend using starch, those who propose a variant without yeast or with eggs beaten in a bain-marie, others dwell on the differences between static or ventilated oven for final result, or pushes for the use of a planetary mixer rather than a food processor like the Thermomix ... In any case, I must confess that my grandmother's and mother's recipe does not change it with any other, because for me is the top and represents the traditional sponge cake. And then, the results I get when I prepare it are always comforting, because the dessert becomes really high, soft and delicious!
Before discovering the ingredients and doses to prepare a homemade sponge cake in an easy and fast way, I open a parenthesis: have you ever wondered why it is called that? Well, according to studies it is said that the recipe for sponge cake was born from a Genoese cook, a certain Giobatta Carbona, who in the mid-eighteenth century, finding himself in Spain with the Marquis Domenico Pallavicini, invented this very soft and extremely soft dough. sweet. This preparation was given the name Pâte Génoise, in honor of the inventor's Ligurian roots, and even today this recipe is very well established in the field of pastry. However, given its complexity, it became necessary to create an even simpler dough which was baptized sponge cake, to honor the Spanish court that had so much praised it.
The ingredients and doses of the original recipe for the sponge cake allow you to create a base with a diameter of 24 centimeters, obtaining a dough high enough to obtain three layers to be filled at will, or one of 26 cm if we prefer a cake of two layers. A tip: for me it is better to prepare the pds base the day before, because this simple foresight will make cutting easier. Then it will be sufficient to proceed with the filling of the preparation, using a simple custard or some more elaborate compound, to give more flavor to the cake.