Chocolate sponge cake. Genoese sponge cake (chocolate) Genoese sponge cake recipe
Genoese sponge cake is a classic that will allow you to forget about store-bought sponge cakes, pastries and rolls! Fluffy and light, it is a real lifesaver, it cooks quickly and, with some skill, it freezes simply and perfectly. Use it as a base, experiment with different impregnations, creams, fruits, jams and chocolate. After baking, the biscuit must stand before soaking, so it is better to bake it on the eve of the holiday.
You will need:
- 5 eggs;
- 150 g powdered sugar;
- 150 g of flour (ideally, you need flour for baking and biscuits, it is made from soft varieties of wheat, it should not contain a lot of gluten, it must be the highest grade, if you don’t find one, don’t worry, replace 20% of the flour with starch);
- 60 g butter(fat content - 82.5%);
- optional - vanilla essence.
Preparation:
The biscuit dough needs to be prepared in one go, without any distractions. Therefore, we prepare everything that we may need in advance. We take out all the necessary products from the refrigerator. You should have a few clean spoons on hand, a mixer ready to use, and a pan in which the sponge cake will be baked. It is most convenient to use a springform pan with a diameter of 20-25 cm. The pan should be lined with baking paper and lightly sprinkled with flour. If there is no paper, grease the bottom with oil, the surface with flour; there is no need to grease the walls of the mold with oil, since the sponge cake rises, as if “clinging” to the walls of the mold.
In addition, we will need a heat-resistant bowl, say, made of stainless steel, which can be placed on some saucepan with boiling water. Pour some water into a saucepan and put it on the stove to boil (the bowl placed on the saucepan should not touch the bottom of the water). Preheat the oven to 195 o C (it is better to turn off the convection function, if available).
Now we measure out all the ingredients and prepare them for further use. We sift the powdered sugar, this will save us from small lumps; you can also use sugar, but in this case, the finer and higher quality it is, the better. Sift the flour into a separate bowl, you can do this several times to thoroughly enrich it with oxygen; if you replaced some of the flour with starch, sift these components together. Butter (and we need exactly butter, not peasant butter, with the maximum fat content) needs to be melted: lower the container with the butter into hot water or in a saucepan on the stove. Once the butter is melted, leave it in a warm place, such as next to the stove or over a cup of hot water. By the time of use, the oil should maintain a temperature of 37 o C, check it on your wrist, it should be warm.
Break the eggs into a heatproof bowl and add powdered sugar.
We place the bowl on the prepared saucepan, we get a steam bath. Begin whisking the heated egg-sugar mixture. The mixture should not be overheated; its temperature should not exceed 45-50 o C. It is not necessary to check the temperature with a thermometer, just when you feel that the mass has become hot, remove the bowl from the steam bath and continue whisking.
While the mass is heating up in a steam bath, I beat it with a whisk; when the bowl is on the table, I turn on the mixer. It takes quite a long time to beat the mass with a household mixer, about 8-10 minutes. The mass should lighten, increase in volume by 2.5-3 times, at the same time, it should thicken and acquire a creamy texture. Beating can be stopped when a pattern appears clearly on the surface of the mass; if you run a spoon over the mass, the groove tightens slowly, reluctantly.
Now very carefully add flour and butter into the egg-sugar mixture. We do it as follows. Add some flour. Using a spoon, or better yet a silicone spatula, mix the flour into the mixture with just a few top-down movements. Our task is to keep the dough as voluminous as possible, so intensive and prolonged mixing should be avoided. Add some of the warm oil in the same way. In several steps, 2-3, add all the flour and butter, finishing with flour.
Pour the finished dough into a pre-prepared mold (fill the mold no more than 3/4 full so that the biscuit has room to rise), and immediately place it in a preheated oven. Depending on the size of the mold, the sponge cake will bake for 30-40 minutes. The readiness of the dough is determined by the color of the crust, it will turn light brown, as well as by its elasticity. If, when pressed with your fingers, the hole quickly recovers, the biscuit is baked and should no longer “sag.” The oven must not be opened during baking, at least for the first 20 minutes. In addition, biscuits do not like to be shaken, so you should not beat the meat or allow children to jump near the oven. Remove the finished biscuit from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
After 20 minutes, the sponge cake can be removed from the mold by carefully cutting around the perimeter with a knife; the sponge cake can be removed from the springform pan without a knife. The finished semi-finished product can be used to prepare various cakes, you can soak it in syrup or coat it with cream, but for this it must stand for at least 4-8 hours, and preferably 24. So, without removing the paper, we leave the sponge cake to “rest” when it has completely cooled down , to prevent excessive drying, you can cover it with cling film.
If there is no time to wait, then freshly baked sponge cake can be served as an independent dish, just sprinkled with powdered sugar on top. In this case, you can serve it with fruits pureed with sugar or strong sweet coffee (a ceremony described more than once in French novels). Pieces of biscuit are dipped into coffee, soaking it, so to speak, on-line, it turns out very tasty! And don’t be surprised if a piece of good biscuit easily “drinks” your cup of coffee :)
Bon appetit!
Every pastry chef is looking for a recipe for a delicious sponge cake, ideal in structure and external qualities, without thinking about the cooking process. But in the end, it is this that is the secret of success in working with biscuit dough. That is why the Genoese sponge cake was created with the most delicate taste and a complete absence of artificial leavening agents to give the cake an airy structure. It takes about an hour to prepare, but is so good that it is delicious just with a cup of tea, without additives in the form of cream, fondant or glaze.
Why was the biscuit called that?
This pastry has two more interesting names: Genoise sponge cake and Spanish bread, and this miracle recipe was invented by Jobatta Cabon, a Genoese, when he was at the court of the Italian marquis, who arrived in Spain on a visit. was stunned by the bread from the Marquis’s table: airy, soft and incredibly tasty, it instantly gained popularity and began to be called “Genoise”, i.e. “Genoese dough”. But since upon arrival home, in Genoa, it was somehow inappropriate to call the pie Genoese dough, the sponge cake was nicknamed “Spanish bread,” thus perpetuating Cabona’s feat.
This type of dough turned out to be so finicky that initially no one could repeat the recipe: either the mass was not whipped properly, or in the oven it simply refused to rise, and if this succeeded, then when serving, the baked goods could not be cut: it crumbled or was crushed with a knife made of -for a very soft structure.
Cooking feature
Only over time was the secret of preparing the perfect Genoise sponge cake revealed: it turned out that it can be prepared only by adhering to certain rules, strict recipes and oven temperature conditions. The Genoese recipe, but the preparation itself includes several steps:
Preparation of the workplace and products;
Heating the egg mass;
Beating the mass;
Adding flour;
Adding butter to the dough;
Baking and resting before use.
At first it may seem that preparing Genoese sponge cake is too complicated for an inexperienced pastry chef, but this is only at first sight. If you know the important subtleties of the process, strictly adhere to the rules and observe the proportions of the products, then everything will definitely work out.
At the very beginning, you need to organize your workspace: turn on the oven to preheat (set the temperature to 180 degrees), put water in a small saucepan to boil for a steam bath, and be sure to choose a bowl for whipping so that it fits comfortably in this saucepan without touching the bottom of the boiling water. It is important that the mixing bowl can withstand heat, but not be made of aluminum, otherwise the egg whites will darken and not beat properly. Do not forget to measure the products in grams, placing them in bowls.
You should also prepare the baking pan in advance by lining the bottom with parchment paper, lightly greased. It is very convenient to use a springform pan - getting ready-made Genoese sponge cake will be as easy as shelling pears.
Required Ingredients
The recipe for Genoese sponge cake requires the presence of the following products in the following quantities:
- Eggs - six pieces.
- Powdered sugar - 180 grams.
- Butter - 80 grams.
- Flour - 130 grams, be sure to sift two or three times.
Some people add vanillin to the flour at the tip of a knife to flavor the dough - this is optional, but it gives the Genoese sponge cake a delicate aroma without affecting the quality of the dough in any way.
Step one: beat the fluffy mass
Melt the butter until liquid, but do not boil. Break the eggs into a mixing bowl, add powdered sugar and heat in a boiling water bath. It is imperative to stir the sweet mass without interruption until it warms up to forty degrees. How to find out if you don't have a thermometer? Dip your little finger into the mass - it will be slightly warm, but not hot. This means that the desired temperature has been reached and you can remove the pan from the heat. This is one of the important points, because if you overheat, the egg whites will curl into flakes, and if the heat is not enough, the sponge cake will not work well.
As soon as the egg mass is removed from the stove, we immediately begin to beat it with a mixer, you can even start even earlier - on the stove, if convenient. It is advisable to use the maximum speed of the mixer so that the eggs increase in volume by 2-3 times as fast as possible, because the oven has already warmed up and is waiting. On average, this takes about eight minutes, and to make sure that the mass is sufficiently whipped, we draw a groove along it with our finger: if it practically does not connect, the edges remain in place - the mass is ready for further manipulation.
Step two: kneading the dough
We visually divide the entire amount of flour and butter into three parts: pour one third of the flour into the whipped mixture, mix, then carefully pour the third part of the butter into the dough, trying to pour not into the middle, but along the edges, as if over a dish. Mix again.
Attention! You need to stir with a spoon only with bottom-up movements, and not in a circular motion, as people usually do in such cases. This is done so that the whipped mass does not settle prematurely and remains fluffy, but it is better not to stir for too long, so as not to lose the fluffiness again.
Next, we do the same with the rest of the flour and butter, that is, there will be two more stages of introducing each product. This is another secret of the recipe for a delicious Genoese sponge cake. In this way, the maximum fluffiness of the mass is achieved and maintained, which in the oven will turn into magnificent pastries.
Baking process
How to bake a fluffy sponge cake without losing its airiness? Pour the finished dough into the mold, put it in a hot oven and wait for about half an hour, although sometimes it takes forty minutes. Naturally, we do not open the oven ahead of time, otherwise the dough will settle and all the work will go to waste. After 30 minutes, you can check the readiness by piercing the sponge cake with a wooden toothpick - if it’s dry, then it’s time to turn off the oven, but leave the pan in it with the doors open for 15 minutes and only then take the Genoese sponge cake out of the oven.
The cake should not be taken out of the mold immediately; at least half an hour should pass, and only then can you carefully remove the finished product, which still needs to cure and ripen. Just let the biscuit sit at room temperature for 6-10 hours, covering it with a clean towel.
We will need the following products:
60 g wheat flour + a little more for dusting the pan
70 g sugar-free cocoa powder
80 g butter
6 fresh eggs
290 g sugar
a pinch of natural vanilla sugar
a pinch of crystalline citric acid
60 ml cherry kirsch vodka, cherry liqueur or cherry brandy
600 g frozen cherries
refined vegetable oil for greasing the pan
As you can see, no baking powder, no soda, and a minimum of flour.
In addition, we will still need to prepare the cream, for which we need:
200 g dark chocolate
1 liter of cream with a fat content of at least 30%
1 lemon
1 orange
4 tbsp. l. Sahara
1 tsp. vanilla sugar
and a packet of cream fixative
And for decoration- powdered sugar
First we must prepare everything. First, sprinkle the bottom of a springform pan with a diameter of 23 cm with water, then cover with a circle of parchment of the same diameter, grease the parchment with refined vegetable oil and lightly sprinkle with flour.
Secondly, put the cherries in a bowl and let them thaw. Then we will drain the cherries in a colander and dry them.
Third, melt the butter over low heat.
Fourthly, sift the flour and cocoa together through a sieve, preferably twice.
Fifth, pour the sugar into the bowl of a stationary blender and grind to the size of table salt. This is a very important point. Why? Because if you use regular coarse granulated sugar for the sponge cake, the Genoese sponge cake may not rise.
Now that we have prepared everything, we can proceed directly to cooking.
Break the eggs into a large heatproof bowl, add 190 g of sugar and vanilla sugar. Place the bowl over a saucepan of boiling water over low heat. Beat with a mixer at minimum speed until the mixture heats up to approximately 40-43°C. Then remove the bowl from the heat, increase the mixer speed to maximum and beat until the mixture has approximately tripled in volume.
Pour the egg mixture into the bowl of a food processor. Butter - the one we previously melted - warm up slightly. Pour 1/3 of the flour and cocoa mixture onto the surface of the egg mass and mix at low speed until smooth. Pour half the oil around the edge of the bowl and stir again. In the same mode, kneading each time, add another 1/3 of the flour and cocoa mixture, the remaining butter, the remaining flour and cocoa mixture.
Pour the dough into the mold and level the surface. Place in the oven preheated to 180°C. Bake for 30-35 minutes until the sponge cake begins to pull away from the sides of the pan. In addition, the finished biscuit should spring back slightly when pressed.
Remove the pan with the biscuit from the oven and place it on a wire rack. Leave for 10 minutes. Run a long, narrow knife around the inside of the sides of the mold. Remove the sides of the mold. Let the cake cool on a wire rack to room temperature.
While the biscuit is baking, prepare the syrup for soaking. Pour 80 ml of water into a small saucepan, add sugar and citric acid. Place over low heat and cook, stirring gently with a wooden spoon, until the water is hot but still not boiling. Stop stirring because otherwise the syrup will become sugary. Brush the sides of the pan with water using a brush. Bring to a boil, cover with a lid and continue cooking for exactly 2 minutes. Remove from heat, remove lid and let cool to room temperature.
Mix the syrup with kirsch or liqueur.
At 1/3 and 2/3 of the height of the sponge cake, make horizontal cuts about 1 cm deep. Then take a large knife, insert it into the upper horizontal cut and carefully cut off the top cake. Using a spatula, move it onto a rimless baking sheet, transfer to a large plate and set aside. Separate the second cake in the same way. Leave the last layer on the base of the pan.
Using a juicer, extract juice from lemon and orange.
Separate 170 g of chocolate - we need it for the cream; Set aside the rest of the chocolate to decorate the cake. So, we need to finely chop these same 170 g of chocolate, and then mix them in a bowl with 60 ml of hot water until smooth. Using a brush, brush the sponge circle left on the base of the mold with a mixture of syrup and kirsch.
Beat the cream with the remaining 100 g of sugar, vanilla sugar and cream fixative with a mixer until soft peaks form.
The cream fixer is generally powdered sugar plus a little regular starch, no high chemicals. So if you can’t buy such a fixative, just take a pinch or two of regular potato starch, dilute it in a tablespoon of water and add it to the cream.
Separate about 80ml of whipped cream and add to the chocolate mixture. Mix with a spatula. Separate about 125ml more cream, add again to the chocolate mixture and stir.
Using the same spatula, very quickly spread the chocolate cream onto the soaked cake layer.
Brush the second round of sponge cake on one side with the mixture of syrup and kirsch. Carefully place the soaked side on the base of the cake, greased with chocolate cream. Press lightly onto the surface of the cake with your fingertips.
Brush the surface of the cake with a mixture of syrup and kirsch. And now it’s time for our cherries. We put it in a colander, set aside a few pieces to decorate the cake, and place all the other berries like this, in a layer of one berry.
Add lemon and orange juice in a thin stream to the remaining cream, while mixing with an immersion blender at low speed. Separate 500 ml of the resulting mixture of cream and citrus juice, place on top of the cherries.
Brush the last round of sponge cake with the syrup and kirsch mixture. Place the soaked side on the cherries with cream. Lightly press the cake down to make it even.
Place the cake, remaining cream and cherries in the refrigerator. Cool for 30 minutes.
Remove the cake from the refrigerator.
Grease the sides and top of the cake with whipped cream.
Place the remaining cream in a pastry bag fitted with a star tip and decorate the cake with a border.
Dry the remaining cherries with a napkin, arrange them beautifully along the edge of the top of the cake, and lightly sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Grate the remaining chocolate on a coarse grater and carefully place it in a mound in the center.
The prepared cake must be placed in the refrigerator and allowed to brew for 24 hours.
I'm a big fan of biscuits. I love cooking more than eating. Cheesecakes and sponge cakes are my weakness. So I couldn't resist making this delicious sponge cake.
True, I got it like this the second time. The first time it was dense, although tasty.
But the biscuit should be airy, tender, soft, melt in your mouth! And these adjectives fully correspond to the Genoese biscuit. When I prepared it the second time, I took into account all the mistakes of the first preparation. I'll tell you about this now. But first, a video downloaded from one of the sites.
And now, in order. All we need is:
6 eggs
190 g sugar,
130 g flour,
2 tsp. starch,
80 g melted butter.
The whole difficulty lies in the cooking technology. So, eggs
add sugar,
mix lightly, heat in a water bath in a large heat-resistant bowl to a temperature of 37-40 degrees (I don’t have one, heated it in a small saucepan, then poured it into a large bowl). You don't need a thermometer; this temperature is perceived as neither warm nor cold. Or a little warm. It's just our body temperature. Then the first important point. Remove the egg-sugar mixture from the water bath and begin beating with a mixer at maximum speed. You need to beat for a long time until the mixture becomes white and thick.
The criterion for checking readiness is the wavy surface from the mixer. You can also run your finger across the surface. There will be a fingerprint that does not immediately disappear on it.
And at the same time, the volume of the mixture will increase three times, and maybe five times. Or at six, I didn’t check. It will only increase. I beat for about 15 minutes. Now the second important point. Add about a third of the flour, sifted three to four times, mixed with starch, to the whipped mixture.
Be sure to stir from bottom to top, then half of the melted butter and cooled to room temperature, pouring it around the edges of the bowl.
then again a third of the flour, stir from bottom to top, the remaining butter around the edges, stir, the remaining flour, stir. And every time from the bottom up. The first time I beat the egg mixture, it increased in size, exactly five times. And when I introduced the last portion of flour, the mixture began to sag a lot.
This shouldn't happen. But I poured the settled mixture into an ungreased mold with a bottom covered with parchment and put it in an oven preheated to 180 degrees. I baked it for 40 minutes, without opening the oven for the first 30 minutes, as required for a sponge cake, but I got a dense sponge cake, although tasty.
Not as required! And now attention: work on the mistakes! I thought that at least two factors could have influenced the strong subsidence of the dough: the flour must be sifted at least (!) three times so that it is no longer dense, and also the dough must be stirred not with a metal spoon, but with a silicone or wooden spatula. And after adding the next portion of flour or butter, stir briefly, three or four times from bottom to top, without worrying about homogeneity after the next stirring. The second time I sifted the flour and starch four times, using a silicone spatula when stirring. And immediately after stirring, I poured it into the prepared form and immediately into the oven. Bake for 50 minutes. And my efforts were not in vain! I got a fluffy sponge cake that didn't collapse after baking!
The taste is divine! I did not make a cake from this sponge cake. He himself is magnificent! I simply decorated the top with powdered sugar using a stencil.
And one more point that I forgot about. There should be 240 grams of eggs in this recipe. I broke 5 eggs for the second time, they weighed 260 g. I decided that this was enough. And the egg-sugar mixture almost tripled in volume. But it didn’t settle when other ingredients were introduced. Yes, and you need to take fine sugar and always white. Reed is not suitable. Some of the sugar can be taken as vanilla. It will not be worse. Next time I'll make a Genoa chocolate sponge cake. And I’ll make a cake based on it. And then I'll tell you. Later.
Genoese sponge cake (chocolate).
The sponge cake is simple and capricious at the same time, but for the persistent and stubborn it will be a real gift, because it is an amazing basis for a lot of different cakes.
Ingredients:
Eggs - 6 pcs
sugar (fine) - 190 g
flour - 100 g
cocoa powder - 30 g
butter - 80 g
Preparation:
One of the keys to success is the correct organization of the process, as well as careful study of the recipe.
You should not prepare this dough for the first time on the eve of important events (some experience is needed).
Since everything needs to be done quickly, it makes sense to prepare all products and equipment in advance.
Grind the sugar in a blender until it becomes finer.
Melt the butter and let cool to room temperature.
Line a springform baking pan (made of high-quality steel) with parchment paper. The sides of the mold remain free (there is no need to grease them or cover them with paper).
Sift flour and cocoa 2-3 times.
It turns out to be a nice even mixture.
Now let's move on to the main process.
Place a saucepan of water on the fire and bring it to a boil.
Beat all the eggs into a large bowl (breaking them one at a time into a separate container to avoid any spoiled eggs getting into the dough).
Place a bowl of eggs on top of a pan of boiling water, immediately (!!!) add fine sugar, constantly (!!!) stirring, bring the mixture to 35-40 degrees. The mass should be warm, never hot.
I admit, I checked the temperature with my hand. The eggs heat up in less than a minute in my glass bowl, with constant stirring with a whisk.
Now remove from heat and immediately begin to beat the eggs with a mixer. At the same time, turn on the oven to 180 degrees.
The egg mass should increase 2-3 times; with a powerful mixer this will take about 8 minutes.
Beating is finished when a non-sinking groove remains on the surface.
Now add flour with cocoa and butter.
Sift 1/3 of the flour and cocoa mixture into the egg mixture. Mix with a whisk or spoon in several movements (must be movements from bottom to top, not circular).
Now pour half of the cooled butter along the edges of the dough.
Mix again from top to bottom.
Another 1/3 of the flour mixture.
Mix.
And again oil.
Stirred.
The last third of the flour is with cocoa.
Mix.
Don't forget about top to bottom movements.
As soon as the mass becomes uniform in color, it needs to be poured into a mold prepared in advance and sent immediately to a preheated oven (I placed it in the center).
30-35 min. You don’t have to remember about the biscuit.
You shouldn’t look in so that the dough doesn’t fall off.
Readiness is determined by using a wooden stick, and the finished dough should spring back when pressed slightly.
Then take out the biscuit and use a sharp knife to run along the edge and sides.
Carefully remove and let cool on a wire rack.
If you start cutting it now, it will crumble and fall apart in large pieces.
You need to let the biscuit stand for 8-12 hours.
Then it can be carefully cut.
A tin with a diameter of 24 cm produces a sponge cake about 4 cm high.
Decorate the cooled biscuit to your taste.
