Recipe: Second Birthday Chinese-Style Mini Spongecake

Dear Fellow Moms/ Readers,  I'm sorry for my long absence from blogging. Despite the lack of recent updates, I'm glad to see from the blog stats that people are still finding my posts helpful, as the reason for my creation of this blog is to share some of the good stuff that I am figuring out as a parent. :)  Having said that, it's not easy to find extra time to blog as a full time working mom, with a full time + on call working husband!

EW baby is turning TWO tomorrow! The time has literally flown by, and I have cherished and enjoyed every moment of it.  We are going to throw him a small party with close friends and family over the weekend, but will also be at his daycare tomorrow for a little lunch celebration.  We're bringing homemade fried rice and spring rolls (thanks to his grandparents), dino chicken nuggets, fruit and cupcakes.  

Originally, I was thinking of making him vanilla vanilla cupcakes (I'll try to share that recipe sometime), but then his teacher told me "No Frosting."  Bummer. No frosting? I get it - lunch is right before nap time.  But most cakes taste more exciting with frosting. :( While my vanilla cupcakes are quite good without the frosting, they can be a bit dense. So I came up with a Plan B! I thought of the delicious moist and fluffy, not-to-sweet, sponge cakes at the Chinese bakeries, and searched the internet for a recipe.  I was able to find a few - but most of them were by Asian bloggers and used the metric system and celsius.  After reading comments, it also seemed some of the recipes were hit or miss. Ultimately, I adapted what I could from the best of the bunch, and came up with my own - largely based off this recipe from the hungry kittens blog.  

I made a batch last night and it was a great success! I like to make things mini / bite sized, and figure this is also practical given the target audience of 18-30 month olds, so I used mini muffin pan.  I gave EW baby one for breakfast and he LOVED it!  Since myself and EW baby daddy also ate a bunch - an adult portion is easily 3-4 of these mini muffins since they are so light - I had to make another batch today to bring to school tomorrow. I can vouch for this recipe - came out solidly successful both times.

This recipe makes a nice amount for a family or small party of 12-16 little kids/adults, but I don't think you'd have any issue tripling it for a regular size recipe that makes 2 round layers  to assemble into a traditional cake (see Hungry Kittens blog for original recipe).  I was able to find all the ingredients at my regular neighborhood grocery store.  Here we go....

Chinese-Style Mini Spongecake Recipe  

* my recipe made 19 mini-muffins, but Hungry Kittens blogger made "1 mini loaf tins and approx 3 sponge muffins" 

* Prep time: about 15-20 min, Cook time : 10 min

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup cake flour (I used Swans Down - found at my local grocery store)
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1/6 tsp cream of tartar *(I used 1/8 tsp + half of 1/8 tsp - worked fine!) 
• 1/6 tsp baking powder *
• 1/3 cup superfine or castor sugar 
• 1/6 cup of 2% milk (I used half of a 1/3 cup, other recipes use water but I figured milk might give a nice rich taste. It tasted great. I never used water so can't compare :/ )
• 1/12 cup of vegetable oil (I used a third of a 1/4 cup - approximately)
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp almond extract

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 170 C degrees / about 340 Fahrenheit. *I did not make full size cake but original recipe advises to use 180C if making full size cake.
2. Beat egg whites until slightly foamy. Add the cream of tartar and then beat with electric mixer until stiff peaks form. (I used my kitchen aid mixer with whisk attachment - took a few minutes, maybe 5?)

3. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and sugar.  In another bowl, mix the egg yolks, milk, oil and vanilla & almond extracts. Combine the two and use whisk to stir until creamy (A minute or so)
4. Pour the yolk mix over the egg whites very gently, 1/3 at a time, and fold together until just combined.  This is a very delicate step. Do NOT over mix! Batter should remain light and airy.

5.  Pour batter into prepared mini muffin pan with liners. Since this sponge cake tends to rise, I used regular paper cupcake liners in my mini cupcake tray. They didn't really fit but once I put the batter in they sunk in nicely. Sure, there was a crease here and there but it didn't affect the taste and I had no issues with overflowing muffin-tops!

As you can see, my recipe made about 19 mini muffins-  I filled them to the edge of the pan. 

6. Bake for about 10-11 minutes until done. Since these are mini muffins, I found it easy to cook then uniformly and had no issues with the cakes collapsing. They came out of the oven looking like this, and stayed looking like this!

Delicious!