Sponge cake

Sponge cake is a light cake made with egg whites, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Most sponge cakes contain egg yolks, but some do not, such as angel food cake.

The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife (1615). The cake was more like a cracker: thin and crisp.

The modern sponge cakes arose when bakers started using beaten eggs as a leavening agent in the mid-19th century. The creation of baking powder by a British food manufacturer in 1843 allowed the addition of butter, permitting the creation of the Victoria sponge. In American baking terms, a sponge cake is different from a butter cake.