One of my family’s cherished Passover treats is the sponge cake originally made by my Bubby — my maternal grandmother. My Bubby handed down her recipe to my mom, who faithfully made it for our family Seder for the past 45 or so years.
The original paper with the recipe as typed by my Bubby lives in the original box of a vintage Van Wyck electric hand mixer (circa 1961), which has been my mom’s trusty Passover mixer for 50 years.
A couple of years ago I took over the mantle of making the sponge cake. I’m far from a novice baker. I’ve been baking on my own since at least the age of 10, and baking is one of my favorite hobbies — albeit one I don’t engage as often as I’d like.
I’ve even taking professional baking classes.
Yet this cake triggers my anxiety like almost no other baking project.
In theory, it’s a simple recipe.
The sponge cake itself is a variation of an angel food cake, delicately flavored with a mix of freshly squeezed lemon and orange juices. Instead of flour, it relies on a mixture of cake meal and potato starch that must be sifted several times.
The yolks are beaten with the juice and “flour”, then added to egg whites that have been beaten to “soft peaks.”
My Bubby called it “foolproof.”
It’s also easy to mess it up. Baking is science, and if you get the science wrong, you can end up with a cake that doesn’t work.
Last year, I was crestfallen when my sponge cake didn’t rise. Although it was delicious, it lacked the light, airy texture of the ideal archetype.
Getting the egg whites to the right form is a delicate balancing act.
Just like whipped cream can quickly turn into butter if you overdo it, it doesn’t take much to quickly cross over from “soft peaks” to “over done” when beating egg whites.
It’s also counterintuitive. You might think that beating the whites to a stiffer peak will help them hold their shape better when you add the heavier yolk mixture.
This was the mistake I made last year. As I folded in the yolk mixture and poured the batter into the pan, it looked like it was the right consistency. The whites seemed to have a lot of air in them, and the batter sat pretty high in the pan. But that’s where it stayed.
It was delicious, but dense.
This year, I monitored the egg whites more carefully. I pulled out the mixer when the egg whites barely held a soft peak. As I folded in the yolks, the batter felt almost a little watery. I wondered if it would hold up.
I put the cake in the oven, crossed my fingers, said a prayer, then waited with baited breath.
About midway through the baking, I turned on the oven light to peek in. The cake was rising high in the pan.
Deep exhale.
Lesson learned. Don’t overbeat the egg whites.
This particular lesson is not confined to baking. In fact, it comes up for me across the spectrum of life activities.
Here are some examples:
- When I over-edit a writing piece, I don’t necessarily make it better. In fact, I often end up stripping the little details that inject my personality into a piece and that readers find most resonant.
- After months of doing a lot of high-intensity workouts and CrossFit classes, I’ve learned that higher intensity doesn’t necessarily lead to greater impact on strength and fitness. I’m in the process of revamping my training program to create better balance.
- After adding a lot more elements to my private coaching program, I found that prospective clients were less likely to enroll. I was willing to do more work and offer more value, but they found it overwhelming. I was able to enroll clients at a higher investment by scaling back on the offering.
Sometimes life is counterintuitive that way, especially if you have a tendency to overwork and overdeliver.
Doing more does not necessarily make something better, create more value, or lead to better outcomes. In fact, in many cases it leads to worse outcomes.
It can be tricky to find that delicate balance between effort and grace, between doing enough so that the cake holds together but not so much that is fails to rise.
Sometimes we need to go too far one way to find the balance point. Life is always asking us to feel it out and adjust.
At least for the moment, lesson learned (again): Do Less.
An ideal creative piece, workout, coaching program — indeed, an ideal life — is like an ideal sponge cake: filled with flavor, yet also light and airy, with a spaciousness that leaves you feeling like you can always eat another slice.
[…] this essay, I shared a crucial lesson I learned while making my Bubby’s Passover sponge cake […]