Mom's 50th!!!

It's the big 5-0!!! My mom is the greatest, and what can I ever do to celebrate her 5th decade of life? I know... I'll make her a cake. Yes, it's a far cry from all the effort and time and craziness she has put up with when dealing with me. I've scoured the billions of blogs that I have saved to my "favorites" and was hoping to find the perfect cake recipe. I finally did... I'll be whipping up one mango-mousse cake and one raspberry-mousse cake. Well, now that I've blogged about making the sponge, I hope that the cake turns out!

White Sponge Cake

Ingredients:

- 4 egg yolks

- 1/8 cup granulated sugar

- 1 tbsp rum

- 1 tsp vanilla

- 110ml water

- 75ml canola oil

- 1 1/4 cup self-rising cake flour (or cake flour + 1/4tsp salt + 1/2 tsp baking powder)

- 4 egg whites

- 3tbsp granulated sugar

- 1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Method:

1. Mix egg yolks with 1/8 cup sugar and the cake flour; mix well, until it resembles pastry dough.

2. Stir together the water, oil, rum and vanilla flavoring. Slowly add the oil mixture to the egg yolk mixture. Blend well and set aside

3. In a separate (chilled, metal) bowl, whip egg whites until frothy. Slowly add in the cream of tartar and continue whipping until soft peaks form. Gradually add in the sugar, and continue to whip the whites until they form stiff peaks.

4. Add half of the egg white mixture to the egg yolk batter, until just combined (do this gently).

5. Add in the remaining egg whites and fold in gently, until just combined.

6. Pour batter into prepared 9-inch pan (I used two 9-inch pans with 1 1/2 inch sides, so I wouldn't have to cut the cake into layers)

For the chocolate sponge, follow the recipe above, simply adding in 1/8 cup cocoa powder to the egg yolks in step #1.

Well, the cakes smelled delicious. But now the real task begins. I must attempt to prepare the mousse cake and have it set properly. Because the last time I tried to make a mousse cake it was quite disasterous :P (see for yourself)