The Best Chocolate Sponge Cake
The best simple chocolate cake recipe for super moist, rich and chocolate-y cake layers! It’s a base for many indulgent chocolate cakes you can ever imagine. Customize it with any kind of frostings and fillings to create rich and indulgent dessert!
Ingredients
Soft and Light Chocolate Sponge Cake Ingredients
- 8 large – room temperature eggs
- 1 cup – granulated sugar
- 1 cup – all-purpose flour
- ½ cup – cocoa or cacao powder
- ½ tsp. – baking soda
- ½ tsp. – baking powder
- Pinch of salt
Method
How to Make Chocolate Sponge Cake Batter
Let's start out by preparing the cake pans. Grease the entire pan with butter and place parchment paper that is cut out to fit the bottom of the pan.
Next, preheat your oven to 350°F (325°F if you're using a convection oven).
After that, sift the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt) into a bowl. Whisk them together to combine by using a hand whisker or electric mixer. Set aside until ready for use.
Whisk the eggs and sugar with a stand mixer until fluffy and pale in color, for about 15 minutes
Tip: This step is very important. Not whipping the egg mixture long enough will yield dense, hard, and heavy cake sponges. The mixture should flow off the whisk attachment very slowly like a thick ribbon
Next, add the flour mixture in 3 separate additions. Use a hand whisker or silicon spatula to fold it in very carefully, and try not to deflate air pockets as much as possible.
Divide the batter into two separate baking pans and bake.
Baking Pans and Baking Time
This recipe requires using two cake pans. Using smaller baking pans will result in 2 tall cake sponges that you can easily cut into 2 layers each and assemble into a 4-layer cake.
Two 8-inch cake pans' baking time is 35 minutes.
Two 10-inch cake pans' baking time is 25 minutes.
Bake in a preheated 350°F (325°F if using convection) oven, on the middle rack for the time specified above, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Do not open the oven sooner than 15 minutes into the baking process, this will disturb the cake rising and the cake sponges will not be tall and fluffy.
After the cake sponges are done baking, remove both cake pans from the oven. Allow the cakes to rest for 5 to 10 minutes before transferring them onto a cooling rack.
Invert the sponge cakes onto the cooling rack, and peel off the parchment paper from the base of each cake. Allow them to cool completely before using them for any recipe that calls for a chocolate cake.