古早蛋糕 Taiwan Sponge Cake

Ingredients:
6 eggs - egg whites and egg yolks in separate bowls
100g cake flour - sieved
100g butter
100g milk
100g caster sugar
approx 2 tbsp vanilla essence or pandan essence

How to Make:

1. Preheat Oven to 150'C.

2. Line your cake tin with baking paper inside. I used a 18 x 18cm. Then use foil paper to wrap the outside of the tin. You will need to prepare a bigger tin which you can place this cake tin inside while baking.

3. Use a small pot and melt butter with the milk at low heat - around 50'C, keep stirring until butter melted and mixed well in the milk. Remove from heat.

4. Pour the butter milk mixture to the bowl containing the sieved flour. Use a hand whisk and whisk and mix them well.

5. Then add egg yolk one-by-one to the flour mixture and continue to use the whisk to whisk and mix them well. Add either vanilla essence or as me, pandan essence and mix well until all smooth.

6. In the bowl containing the egg whites, use an electric whisk to whisk, adding sugar little by little until the egg white mixture is meringue like and you can see ribbons like shapes in the mixture - eg. if you take up the whisk, the mixture stays on the whisk...

7. Add the egg yolk mixture to the egg white mixture. Using the hand whisk to fold them evenly.

8. Pour mixture to the cake tin. Put cake tin inside a bigger tin or tray. Then add hot water to the bigger tin or tray until it's around 1 inch high outside the cake tin.

9. Place the bigger tin or tray with the cake tin to the lower 1/3 of the oven and cook for around 60 mins.

10. test with a skewer. If nothing stick to skewer, it's ready. Remove from oven, then carefully, take out cake tin from the bigger tin or tray with water inside. Carefully, remove cake from the cake tin and tear away the baking paper.

Rest, then serve and enjoy with your favourite tea!