Sponge-Off!

I’d been toying with the idea of making a Vegan Tiramisu, and what with that and my sister’s birthday coming up, I realised that I needed to find a really good eggless sponge-cake recipe. Looking on the internet I found so many recipe variations, each using a different combination of egg-replacers, kinds of flour, proportions of sugar to flour, and baking times and temperatures – there was no way I could tell just by looking what the difference would be in the end result! So I decided to conduct a comparative experiment to find the best eggless sponge-cake recipe – a SPONGE-OFF!

First of all I came up with 5 different options, adapted from recipes I had found and incorporating tips and suggestions for eggless baking. I wanted my sponge to be healthy and not have any hydrogenated fats, so where the original recipes called for Vegetable Oil I substituted this with an egg replacer and/or other binding ingredients.

Rather than baking 5 complete cakes, I calculated a third of the ingredients for each recipe option to make test-sample cupcakes.

Option 1

Adapted from the Vegan Soc's "Vanilla Sponge Cake" recipe.

Recommended Baking Time: 25-30 mins @ 180C

Ingredients:

• 200g/ 7oz Self Raising Flour 
• 3 level tspns Baking Powder
• 115g/ 4oz Raw Cane Sugar
• 3 Flax-Seed ‘eggs’ (3 tablespoons ground Flax Seeds whisked with 9 tablespoons of cold water)
• 2 tsp Vanilla Essence
• Extra water if needed.

Option 2

Adapted from Claudette Baker's "Eggless Sponge Cake" at Recipes4Us.

Recommended Baking Time: 40 Mins @ 180C

Ingredients:

• 225g/ 8oz Self Raising Flour
• 2 tspns Baking Powder
• 175g/ 6oz Raw Cane Sugar
• 3 Vinegar 'eggs' (3 Tablespoons Cider Vinegar + 3 Tspns Baking Soda)
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla pod seeds (I ran out of Vanilla Essence)
• Extra water if needed

Option 3

Adapted from Animal Free Zone's "Easy Vegan Cake" recipe.

Recommended Baking Time 40 mins @ 180C

Ingredients:

• 450g/ 16oz Plain Flour
• 50g/ 2oz Soya Flour
• 50g Agave Nectar (I substituted this for the sugar to try it out - for more info on this amazing ingredient see here)
• 4-5 tsp Baking Powder
• 3 Flax-Seed 'eggs'
• Extra water if needed
  

Option 4

Adapted from the "Vegan Sponge Cake" recipe posted on Elstro's blog.

Recommended Baking Time: 30 mins @ 160C

Ingredients:

• 250g/ 10oz Self Raising Flour
• 1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
• 3 Vinegar 'eggs' (3 tablespoons Cider Vinegar + 3 tspns Baking Soda)
• 200g/ 8oz Raw Cane Sugar
• (This was also supposed to have 150ml Orange Juice but I forgot to add it for the test!)
• Extra water if needed
  

Option 5

Adapted from a recipe on www.ifood.tv.

Recommended Baking Time: 25 mins @ 180C

Ingredients:

• 225g/ 8oz Plain Flour
• 225g/ 8oz Raw Cane Sugar
• 1 tsp Baking Powder
• Pinch fine salt
• 175 ml/ 6 fl oz Soy Milk
• 1 Ripe Banana, Mashed
• 3 Vinegar 'eggs' (3 tablespoons Cider Vinegar + 3 tspns Baking Soda) 
• Extra water if needed 
 

 

The Experiment

First I got to work labeling my bowls, preheating the oven and preparing the trays of cupcake cases.

 

Then, I sifted out all the dry ingredients and ground up the flax seeds ready to be mixed with water for the recipes requiring the 'flax-seed' egg replacer.

Finally at the last minute, I added the wet ingredients and egg replacers, quickly mixing each dough just enough to combine the ingredients without over-mixing (I read that the longer you mix it, the denser the cake will be).

Unsurpisingly things got a little hectic, and in the heat of the moment I forgot to add orange juice to one of the recipes, ran out of vanilla essence, and put Option 4 in the same tray as the ones that were to be baked at 180C. Still, nothing went too awry!

With the leftover dough I made a second batch of testers to put in later and bake for less time to see how this would affect the outcome.

After putting the cakes in the oven, I tasted the mixtures (purely in the interest of scientific rigour) and made the following observations:

Option 1 - Nice, like porridge, plain but slightly sweet. 

Option 2 - Bland dough-like mixture. 

Option 3 - Sticky, bland porridge-like dough. 

Option 4 - Yummy dough - a bit runny. 

Option 5 - Tastiest dough. Banana-y.

Rather than trying to take out each kind of cake at a slightly different time, I ended up taking the whole first batch out after 20 mins, as they seemed to already be brown and in danger of burning. I took out the second batch after 15 mins. 

I called in my independent taste-tester, and the fun began!

Our findings were as follows:

Option 1

1st Batch - baked for 20 mins

Crispy crust, soft interior, good smell, bready texture, not too sweet.

2nd Batch - baked for 15 mins

Good smell, better than the first one, lighter.

Option 2

1st Batch (20 mins)

Soft but sour, not sweet enough

2nd Batch (15 mins)

Better, doughy inside, not so sour

Option 3

Chewy but pleasant

Option 4

Nice delicate crust, a little chewy, good colour, finer texture - less bready. Good smell.

Option 5

Bready, good banana flavour but slight aftertaste of bicarb.

Overall verdict: The best cake was from the second batch of Option 1, baked for 15 mins at 180C.

Lessons learned: 

1. Care should be taken when using the vinegar/bicarb mix as an egg replacer - perhaps use less than is strictly equivalent to the original number of eggs and add more sugar to compensate for the sour taste of the baking soda.
2. Banana, while giving a nice flavour to the dough, will also make it heavier and more 'bready' in texture.

Things to consider:

• Using a combination of flax-seed 'egg' replacer and the vinegar-bicarb mix.
  
• Using fruit juices etc. to sweeten the sponge.