The Elusive Chinese Sponge Cake

A Typical Chinese Birthday Cake

Have you ever had a Chinese birthday cake? Well, I've had one every month from September through January of every year.  In my family, each of our birthdays fall consecutively in each month starting with my Dad in September. These cakes are soft and fluffy and filled with whipped cream and fruit. In recent years, the occasional strawberry or mango mousse has replaced the fruit filling that we have grown accustomed to.  However, the one thing that has never changed is the "sponge" part of the cake. 

Did you know that it is actually super difficult to make a sponge cake? The recipes that are widely distributed are usually much more dense than the Chinese sponge cake.  When finally I've found the right recipe, I run into problems of over-mixing, deflating, the forming of a denser layer etc. However, despite this, in the past couple of months I've decided, "hey, I can do this, who's birthday is coming up so I can ruin it with a badly made birthday cake?" And not only am I going to challenge this elusive Chinese sponge cake, I'm going to put a layer of mousse on it to make it extra special.

Yup, obviously as a beginner I should have stuck with the basics and so my first strawberry mousse sponge cake was a borderline disaster.  I was so embarrassed when the knife went in and a great deal more pressure was needed to cut through the so called sponge.  The strawberry mousse looked as though it would slide right off the cake.  The cake looked pretty good but looking at it is all we should have done. (sigh)

After tasting defeat, I went online in search of where I had gone wrong. I had probably over-mixed the batter and used the wrong temperature on the oven.  Also, the recipe was not for the Chinese sponge but for a regular sponge cake so it was more dense than I expected.  After adjusting all of these factors, I attempted cake number 2 and it came out of the oven spongee and smelling delicious.

The mango mousse sponge cake looked and tasted delicious. Yes it took 4 hours to make but the genuine compliments I received from friends and family were well worth the effort.  If it wasn't for my laziness (I didn't trim the cake before I poured the mousse over it so it didn't look as symmetrical as it should have), it would have been the best cake I've ever made.  My first bite was the taste of hard work and success.