Spongecake

The other dessert that everyone looked forward to every Passover was my mom's spongecake. (Again, it looked way better in person, my camera is fucked.) In fact, when my mom wouldn't attend a seder she'd send a cake with me, because everyone wanted the spongecake that badly. Following is the recipe as written by my mom (with some changes of my own):


Passover Spongecake

12 eggs
juice and grated rind of an orange
grated rind of half a lemon (I missed the "half" part and did a whole one, it tasted fine)
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons oil (canola or some such)
pinch of salt
1 cup matzoh cake meal
1 tablespoon potato starch

First off, separate the whole dozen eggs' yolks and whites. Beat egg yolks, juice, rind, oil and 1 C sugar. Set aside. Wash beaters thoroughly. Then beat egg whites until stiff but not dry, with salt (to hold them together, also using a bit of the lemon's juice for this won't hurt) and mix in additional sugar. (Make sure you do this in a big bowl, a dozen egg whites will get HUGE, as we learned.)

(My mom adds that the lemon and orange should not be skinned with a zester, but that the coarse-hole side of a cheese grater is the best option. She even theorizes that the coarsely grated rind, and often use of a huge freakin' orange, are why her spongecake is so especially loved by our local community.)

Fold egg white into egg yolk mixture thoroughly. Use long, gentle motions with a rubber spatula, down one side of the bowl, across the bottom, up the other, getting the yolk mixture up from the bottom of the bowl and into the whites without breaking down the whites excessively. When you think you're done, check the bottom of the bowl because you'll probably find a pool of yolks there still.

Mix the cake meal and cornstarch together and fold into the egg mixture a quarter cup or so at a time. Use the same technique and once again, when you think you're done, you probably aren't.

Scrape into an ungreased angelfood cake pan.

(Eli note here: What's most important is that it's an angelfood pan with the spire in the center--because that way the cake can cling to the cylinder, since there's nothing to make it rise--and that it come apart into two pieces--my mom's actually isn't springform, but mine is.)
(Beautiful ain't it? Mine is actually wider and shorter than my mom's, which I thought would cause a problem. The cake came out looking different, but it was still delicious and cooked all the way through. Continuing on...)

Push a long knife or metal spatula straight down through the batter to the bottom of the pan and then holding it vertical, pull it all the way around the pan to collapse any air pockets. Bake for an hour at 325°.

Remove from oven and invert immediately, setting the tube over a ketchup bottle or some other bottle with a slender neck so that air can circulate all around the pan while it cools. Most pans have tiny legs but they are not enough. Let the cake cool completely before you remove it from the pan.

(So yeah, it'll just hover upside down for a few hours, always goofy lookin'.)

To remove it from its pan, simply run a long, thin knife (preferably serrated breadknife) around the edges until you can separate the two parts of the pan. The cake will stay with the cylinder. Then do the same thing again, running the knife around the cylinder and underneath the cake until it can come free.