I've been very interested in Passover food lately and trying some new recipes with homemade matzo cake meal. No Fail Passover Sponge Cake was the latest, and it certainly lives up to its name. It's a soft and tender yet sturdy oil-free cake that can easily be made for the holiday or any time of the year.
Sponge Cake in a Tube Pan
The recipe was shared by a friend who saved it from a newspaper. It was touted as a no-fail sponge cake (and given that name) because it doesn't fall out of the pan as it cools. Now I've never had that issue with these types of "cool upside down in the pan" type cakes. If anything, the challenge is getting the cakes out. But I guess people were greasing sponge cake pans. Anyhow, this one is baked in a completely ungreased tube pan with legs like this one or the one below.
If yours doesn't have legs, you can hang it on a bottle. Once cooled, it's fairly easy to carve out of the pan.
This really is a tasty little cake with flavors from the lemon and matzo itself. Since there are only two of us to eat it, I made a half version using a smaller tube pan. It was so good that I made it again and am thinking I accidentally used double the amount of matzo cake meal in the first version because the second one came out even lighter. So yes, apparently this is a no-fail cake.
Serving This Cake
No-Fail Passover Sponge Cake is easy to carve and seems quite durable. There's no oil, but the egg yolks keep it soft and tender. You can use it for any recipe that calls for sponge cake, but my favorite is way so far is with strawberries and whipped cream. I just carved pieces and served with berries and cream, but you could easily cut the whole cake horizontally, put the cream in the middle and on top and arrange berries or fruit.
Storing Passover Sponge Cake
Store the completely cooled sponge cake at room temperature, keeping it lightly covered with plastic wrap or under a cake dome to prevent it from drying out. For storage beyond a day or two, wrap the cake well in your favorite plastic wrap and freeze. It freezes beautifully.
How to Make Matzo Cake Meal in a Vitamix
It saddens me how many years I went without a high speed blender, but I get so much use out of the Vitamix 5200 I bought last year that I'll hopefully make up for it. It can do so many things my other blenders could not -- like make matzo cake meal! To make matzo cake meal in the Vitamix, take about 140 grams of unsalted matzo (4 sheets) and grind on one of the lower speeds. Once ground. Set the machine on high and grind away. 1 cup of matzo cake meal weighs about 125 grams, so you'll have a little over a cup.
This cake meal also works well in the Matzo Meal Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Recipe
Passover Sponge Cake
Ingredients
- 8 large eggs, separated
- ½ cup matzo cake meal (65 grams)
- ¼ cup potato starch (40 grams)
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar (212 grams)
- ¼ cup lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon lemon zest
Instructions
- Separate the eggs while they are cold and allow them to come to room temperature
- Meanwhile, whisk together the cake meal, potato starch and salt.
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Have rack in lower middle of oven, and have ready an ungreased tube pan with legs.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer using the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites until foamy. Gradually add ½ cup (100 grams) of the sugar and beat until white with soft peaks. Put the beaten egg whites in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, in a second stand mixer bowl, beat the yolks and remaining ½ cup plus a tablespoon of sugar (112 grams) for one minute. Beat in the lemon juice and the lemon zest. Stir in the matzo meal mixture. The mixture will be a dark goldenrod type color.
- Remove egg whites from the refrigerator and fold in about ⅓ of them to lighten the mixture. Continue folding another third of the egg whites, keeping mixture light. Fold in remaining until batter is uniform.
- Scrape into the pan and run a scraper through it to even it out.
- Bake until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean and cracks in cake appear dry, about 45 to 50 minutes. Let cool upside (give it at least 2 hours)
- To unmold, slide a knife around the edges. With the tube pan sitting on flat surface, slide the knife under the cake and carve it out from around the tube.
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