Sponge cake

Sponge cake

Sponge cake (Victoria sponge) at an English village fête baking competition (2014)
Type	Cake
Course	Dessert, tea
Main ingredients	Wheat flour, sugar, egg whites, baking powder
Variations	Rice flour
Cookbook: Sponge cake   Media: Sponge cake

Sponge cake is a light cake made with eggs, flour and sugar,^[1] sometimes leavened with baking powder.^[2] Some sponge cakes do not contain egg yolks, like angel food cake, but most of them do. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain.^[3] The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the English poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman (1615).^[4] Still, the cake was much more like a cracker: thin and crispy. Sponge cakes became the cake recognised today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-18th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by English food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter to the traditional sponge recipe, resulting in the creation of the Victoria sponge. Cakes are available in many flavours and have many recipes as well. Sponge cakes have become snack cakes via the Twinkie.