The best sponge recipe

For our Christmas Day  dessert I settled on a new trifle recipe from House & Garden Issue No. 256 December 2015, it looked fabulous!
Not wanting to use a bought sponge I decided to have another go at making my own sponge.
A couple of years ago one of my dear friends, Bernice, said she had a 'never fail' recipe that had been handed down to her through generations of bakers. It sounded like my kind of recipe and I filed it away.
A few weeks ago I finally got around to making it.
I was told to use a large roasting pan (greased with dripping, and floured) but decided to just butter and line the tin with baking paper, leaving out the dripping!
The result was absolutely the best sponge I have ever produced. 
Once slightly cooled, and with some trepidation, I removed my sponge from the tin, cut it in half, wrapped it in cling film and placed it in the freezer to make the trifle on Christmas Eve.
A sponge was always something my mother used to make with ease! And to honour her memory this Christmas I had hoped to create a fabulously soft perfect sponge. (In a few days time it is the 5th anniversary of her death, I will always miss her).
In previous blogs I have attempted a sponge roll which have all cracked, but this recipe rolls beautifully (apparently).
Bernice says 'take this sponge straight out of the oven and while still hot, remove from tin and turn out onto a damp tea towel. At this point spread with jam and roll it up. When cool unroll the sponge and fill with cream, and roll up'. Mmmmmmm, easier said than done.
I will let you know how I get on in another blog post.
Anyway, back to this great sponge recipe.  It is so simple, it's ridiculous....and so very tasty.
Cream Sponge  
 5 eggs
1 level cup of sugar
Beat together until thick and creamy
Gently fold in sifted
1 level cup of flour
1 tsp baking powder 
Lastly fold in 1 tbsp of boiling water
Pour batter into a greased floured pan ( I lined mine with baking paper to be on the safe side!)
Bake 180 degrees C  for 10-15 minutes on fan bake.
Watch it doesn't over cook, it should spring back a little when you gently press the top.
It can be cut in half and filled with cream and whatever summer fruit you may have. And ass Bernice has said, it will feed a crowd nicely.

It's so soft and tasty!

This is the final result using a House and Garden recipe from Dec '15 Issue 256

.  It's fab!

Lamingtons and sponge making

I am a lover of books. Any sort of book. I can be quiet as a mouse flicking through most sorts of books but especially recipe books, ooohing and aaahing and drooling over the ingredients and photos, while always on the lookout, of course, for new ideas.
While visiting Elaine I was handed a copy of  the book 'The Mackenzie Muster - A Century of Favourites" published in 1989 and reprinted many, many times. It is a real beauty, clearly a classic that has stood the the test of time. Full of interesting farming recipes, tips for cooking for big, hungry country folk and catering for crowds. It kept me enthralled for ages. Some of the recipes were pretty 'out there', for example - lamb on a rope! ( If you have a yearning to cook this dish let me know and I will send you the recipe).
So I found myself searching in the book for a good sponge recipe as I had offered to make a few dozen of the classic Kiwi Lamingtons for a local fund raising event. I don't recall having ever made Lamingtons before. But I thought it might be a good idea to make chocolate and strawberry Lamingtons from scratch.... "no store bought sponge for our customers", says I.
I found an easy recipe in the previously mentioned book - 'a big sponge for shearers'! My thinking was, it had to be the 'perfect never fail' sponge, something that has been alluding me for sometime now.
I adore the countryside and love the smell of fresh farming air etc but I can honestly say I have never had to cook for shearers or any farming folk for that matter. In fact you couldn't get a woman more 'city like' than me. But I imagined hungry shearers were pretty hard to please so decided to give the recipe a try.
I am sorry to say I still haven't perfected sponge making and my attempt at baking the 'big shearers sponge' was an utter failure. Not to waste anything, said 'cake like' sponge was dispatched to the freezer for later use in a large trifle.
Six eggs down and back to the drawing board. I turned to Donna Hay's Chocolate recipe book and managed to produce one smallish sponge that I considered almost acceptable but not perfect. But unfortunately it was clearly not big enough to make dozens of Lamingtons.

My attempt at a sponge

By this stage in the morning I was completely 'sponged out' so resorted to asking dear hubby to pop down to the supermarket and buy one large unfilled sponge.

My conclusion through all of this is experience -  making Lamingtons from scratch was a real test of sponge making skills. It was also very time consuming, requiring a lot of patience and a lot of careful dipping and rolling in coconut. (I found the chocolate coating originally too thick and caused the sponge 'cube' to actually fall apart - not helpful.)
I used a Taste recipe for the strawberry Lamingtons and a good old reliable Edmond's recipe (slightly watered down) for the chocolate ones.
Once all the 'issues' were sorted out I considered all the effort absolutely worth it.

Result: They were really nice after all the drama! I was on the morning shift at the stall and my Lamingtons were (thankfully) slowly disappearing to happy customers for $2 each.
My mother always made wonderful sponges, I really wish I had noted down her secret to the perfect sponge. I will just have to keep on trying......

Sponge or Swiss roll - a bit of an experiment

Idling thumbing through an old magazine and spying a chocolate sponge roulade I got the inspiration to make an old fashioned Sponge or Swiss Roll. Do you remember those? A lovely yellow sponge with homemade raspberry jam and whipped cream? I think housewives used to make them because they looked rather grand, especially when you wanted to make an impression.
My mother was great at making sponges, and we were particularly good at scoffing large portions of said sponges when we had half the chance.  More often than not we got the left overs from afternoon teas, consequently not much to share between four greedy children!!!
I really cannot remember ever making a Sponge or Swiss Roll.
I needed cheering up, over the last week or so the weather in Welly has been disgusting, think gale force winds, persistent torrential rain, a wrecked broccoli patch and you get the picture. Even our dog refused to go for a walk!!
We are also looking after our neighbour's chickens (again) - for two weeks - which is wonderful. We feed them twice a day (along with a few left over scraps now and then) and we I have a daily supply of beautiful organic eggs just begging to be used!
Last weekend I felt  it was time to make a Sponge Roll.
Out came my battered 1973 Edmonds Cookbook. In spite of religiously following instructions the result was a bit of a flop - for a couple of reasons. My equally battered 40 year old Amco sponge roll tin had a slight bend in it, not a problem when you are baking slices but clearly a problem for sponges as the bowed bit made the sponge run down one end - result - one thin end of the roll that looked like a burnt tongue. The other end looked good! But not quite good enough to post a photo!
Suffice to say the Amco tin has been sent to the tip.
On turning out the sponge onto a tea towel dusted with icing sugar and carefully rolling the sponge it cracked, right down the middle - apparently a common occurrence if you don't cool the roll to the exact temperature before rolling! Mmmmm.... The good news was, once  smothered with whipped cream and freshly sliced strawberries you would never have known about the disaster that lay beneath! The sponge itself was just the right taste and texture.
However, back to the drawing board for a perfect Sponge Roll.....
I received my Cuisine magazine this week, and I couldn't believe it - on the front page was a Chocolate Roulade. 'It's a sign I said to my hubby!' I am going to give this recipe a go - maybe the chocolate will help make it perfect. And I am especially keen as they are running a competition for subscribers to bake something from this edition and write to them about the results. The prize is a dozen Daniel le Brun bubbles. Very timely for Christmas celebrations.
Definitely worth another go at that Sponge Roll.
I have bought a new Sponge Roll tin, the lovely fresh eggs are ready and I just have to perfect the rolling bit.... watch this space