Basic French Sponge Cake (Genoise)

by: Baker Guy

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This is a purist’s cake because it contains no leavening-it's lightened with air alone-and has a delicate egg flavor and a light texture that make it seem to fall apart in the mouth. To make this classic French sponge cake, you need to beat whole eggs with sugar until they become very pale and are tripled or quadrupled in volume. Because eggs whip up more quickly when they are not ice cold, warm them in a bowl of warm water before cracking them, or use a hand whisk to beat them with the sugar in a bowl placed over a saucepan of barely simmering water until they feel warm to the back of a finger. Beat the egg-sugar mixture until you can lift the whisk and move it back and forth through the batter and the ribbon holds its shape for at least 5 seconds. If you overbeat the eggs, the cake may be dry or, worse, it may fall in the oven. If the eggs are not beaten sufficiently the cake will be heavy. Because genoise is often somewhat dry many bakers-especially French ones-brush each layer generously with flavored simple syrup, making the cake very moist, even wet. The syrup can be flavored with coffee, vanilla, liqueurs such as Grand Marnier, fruit brandies such as kirsch, whiskey Cognac, or rum. This recipe makes 1 layer, which is easily sliced cross-wise into 2 layers; with practice it can be sliced into as many as 4. The cake can be used for any round layer cake. It can be filled with mousseline, buttercream, classic chocolate mousse, white chocolate mousse, fruit Bavarian, stabilized whipped cream, or whipped ganache. It can be glazed or frosted with these same fillings and/or it can be covered with marzipan or rolled fondant.