Happy Home Baking: Chocolate Sponge Loaf

Here again a simple sponge cake recipe that yields moist and tender cake from Happy Home Baking.  It's an easy to bake cake and I don't mind baking this cake again for I like its chocolaty taste.

Thanks to Happy Home Baking, for the original recipe and write up of this cake, please refer to Happy Home Baking: simplicity.

Ingredients

[loaf pan size 19cm x 9cm x 7cm]

Dry Ingredients - sifted together 3 times - set aside

80 gm cake flour

20 gm cocoa powder [used good quality cocoa powder]

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

Liquid Ingredients - combine together - set aside

50 ml vegetable oil

50 ml natural plain yoghurt [room temperature]

1 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

2  large eggs, room temperature

90 gm caster sugar

1. Line loaf pan with foil and parchment paper.  Preheat oven at 170 degrees C.
2. Whisk eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl on high speed [I used Kenwood Mixer speed 5] until the batter is triple in volume, thickens and leaves a ribbon-like trail when the paddle is lifted up [takes about 5 minutes].  Turn to low speed [speed 2-3] for another 1 minute to stabilise the air bubbles in the batter.
3. Sift over the flour mixture into the batter in 3 separate additions.  Use a spatula to gently fold in the flour until well blended with each addition.   TAKE CARE NOT TO DEFLATE THE BATTER.
4. Remove some batter into another mixing bowl.  Add in the liquid ingredients.  Mix with a spatula until well blended.  Add this mixture to the rest of egg/sugar batter.  Fold gently with spatula until well blended.
5. Pour batter into loaf pan, tap the pan on tabletop a few times to release any trapped air bubbles in the batter.
6. Bake in preheated oven for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre of cake comes out fairly clean.  DO NOT OVER BAKE.
7. Remove cake and unmould to cool completely on wire rack.