Jam Sponge Cake: a very old & popular recipe in Romania

Hello foodies, dessert lovers and anyone in between 🤪

Although, for some, this may not be seen as a dessert, but a snack. A sweet treat(if this is any different than a dessert)...or perhaps something to pair it with a cup of coffee? 🥴
To be honest,when I think of dessert, I imagine something more...good looking and fancy.
Maybe I'm saying this because now we are so used with baked sweety goods! and because they are so available to us, they became part of our diet and sometimes we forget that everything that has sugar in it, it's considered a dessert.

Anyways...that being said, let's get back to my recipe.

This recipe was very often made by our grandmothers, with care and love for the whole family. Here, in the area I'm from, this was very popular 25-30 years ago, as far as I can remember. Why? Probably because it is a recipe with only a few ingredients and relatively a cheap one. Flour and eggs were found everywhere, Romanian people were (still are) hard working on the fields, agriculture and raising farm animals at home. Besides the baking powder and lemon, they didnt have to buy rest of the ingredients. It was all home made, included flour. There were mills everywhere.

The sponge cake is very satious and sweet enough. With a cup of tea, this was something to look for at grandma's house.

Ingredients

5 eggs
flour (around 200g)
10g baking powder
1/4 lemon juice
50 ml oil (again, you can use any type, I used olive oil. )
one small sachet of vanilla sugar 10g (or use vanilla extract instead)
3-4 Tbsp sugar
370-400g Jam ( with this recipe I had plum sugar, but you can use any)

This recipe doesnt need precise measures. For example, you can add 6 eggs and 230g flour and the result will be the same. I tested this myself. Maybe adding an extra 10-15 ml vegetable oil and you proportionally adjust the recipe.

The jam I had with this was Plum Jam.
Plum jam is the most popular jam in Romania, or at least it was back in the days, ages ago. WHhy? Because, here, you will see plum trees everywhere. When I was little, I remember that almost everyone had at least one plum tree into their household. At country side, plum trees were planted in front of the house, outside the yard itself. Same it was with walnut trees as well.
So many walnuts and so many plum trees.
Maybe you have heard about Țuică.

Țuică is a traditional Romanian spirit that contains ~ 24–86% alcohol by volume (usually 40–55%), prepared only from plums. Țuică is also the foundational element for creating the traditional Romanian vinars from different spirited fruits. In 2013, Romania produced 1.3 million hectolitres (34 million US gallons) of țuică.
It is considered Romania's national drink.
[wikipedia]

Instructions

The steps to make this sponge cake are the easiest. Actually, you dont need any special equipment or kitchen tools AND prep time is about 15 minutes.

First, in a bowl, beat the eggs with a wisk or you can use an electric one.

In another bowl, add flour. Squezee the lemon juice over baking powder so you get that bubble reaction and add it together with flour.

Add flour and baking powder next to the eggs. Now add the sugar, vanilla and oil. Mix until everything is homogenized but take care not to overmix the dough.

With a spoon, incorporate the jam and mix carefully, nice and slowly a couple of times.

Add baking paper to a tray and bake it for 30-30 min to 170-180 Celsius.

		!

The spongy cake is done!

To be honest, I have baked this cake a few days ago, which is why I decided to share it with you now, though the photos are shared in this post are taken six years ago.
The only difference is that now I used a mix of cherry and strawberry jam instead of plum jam.