Lightining is ready.. vroom..vroom...vroom....

This is the cars cake I made for Kabir's friends' birthday recently. His Mom told me that he was Cars movie fan. So, I tried to incorporate some stuff from the movie. For the cake topper, I made 'Lightining McQueen' from fondant using the tutorial here. And a flag was an easy addition in the end.

My son was not sure why I was not making King(Blue car) and Mater(Brown car) as well. So, I convinced him that the brown(almost) cake is Mater, and the Blue icing is the King. Not sure if he bought it :-)

, As the Birthday boy wanted a Vanilla cake, I tried few recipes before I finalised this one. Its almost identical to the mom's sponge cake recipe. 

This Vanilla Sponge Cake recipe is adapted from Erica's recipe on allrecipes.com 

Ingredients

• 6 eggs
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup cake flour (after sifting)**
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

**If you are out of cake flour, 1 cup of cake flour can be substituted with 2 tbl spoon of corn starch in one cup, with rest of it filled with regular cake flour.

Directions

1. Preheat the oven at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. Separate the eggs. In a large mixing bowl, beat egg yolks until very thick and lemon colored. Beat in sugar gradually. Add water and vanilla extract. Beat in flour.
3. In another bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Then add cream of tartar and salt. Beat mixture until whites are stiff, but not until they are dry. Fold this whipped mixture into yolk mixture.
4. Pour batter into an ungreased 9 inch tube pan. Bake for one hour, or until done. If using two 9 inch regular pans, reduce the cooking time to 35 minutes.

Tips, Tricks & Lessons learnt

• In a sponge cake, pan is not to be greased, as the oil in it will hold the batter from rising. But I lined the base of pan with parchment paper. Not sure if I was suppose to do it or not, but it worked out fine for me.
• Baking powder is not added to sponge cake. The leavening comes only from beaten egg whites.
• Either warm the eggs before using or take them out of refrigerator much before use. Warmed eggs hold more air and create more volume when they're whipped than cold eggs.
• Sponge cake tastes the best when soaked with a syrup or flavouring. I always prefer the pineapple syrup in the canned pineapple.
• Once the batter is ready, it should go into the pans and in the oven immediately. 
• If using a convection oven, always reduce the baking temperature by 25 degree F than what the recipe calls for. In this case, the baking temperature would be 300 degree F.

Happy Baking!