Gula Meleka Spongecake

A new recipe that I devised specially for a competition that I took part in with my daughter.  Although we did not won, but we had fun and it was a good experience!  The cake was baked in an airfryer, but it should work well in oven too.

Ingredients
*7" round tin
4 eggs yolks
80g vegetable oil
100g cake flour - sieved
Pinch of salt
50g gula melaka - chop finely
10g hot water
4 eggs whites
65g sugar


Method

1. Preheat oven at 165C.
2. Grease and line the bottom & sides of the baking tin.  Prep for waterbath method.
3. Pour 10g hot water over chopped gula melaka and stir to dissolve.  Then pour the mixture over the sieve to ensure a smooth mixture.  Set aside.
4. Add yolks, gula melaka mixture, oil and salt, mix until well combined.
5. Add in sieved flour, mix until well combined. Side aside.  The batter will be very sticky.
6. Beat egg whites until soft peak, then start to add in sugar gradually, and continue beating until attain firm peak.
7. Whisk in half of the meringue to the yolk batter until well combined (the batter should turned smooth and manageable after this).  Then fold in the balance meringue to the yolk mixture in 2 batches, be sure to fold until you do not see any streaks of the meringue.
8. Transfer batter to baking tin, tap the tin few times on the table top to release trapped air.  Then cover the tin with aluminium foil and poke holes on top.
9. Then send to bake via waterbath baking method, for 30-35min.
10. You may perform the skewer test to check if the cake is done.
11. Once baked, remove from oven and revert on cooling rack for 5min then remove baking tin and baking sheets.

For buttercream recipe, check out this entry.

The cake while naked :)
(ignore the small ones!)

Piping the rosettes during the contest
(Photo credits to Simply Her)

Cross section of the cake