passover week 2025 - passover fig and earl grey sponge cake

passover week 2025 - passover fig and earl grey sponge cake

• 10 Apr 2025

For Passover Week 2025, I decided to renovate the Fig and Earl Grey Victoria Sponge cake I made earlier in the year. As a Victoria sponge cake is out of the question during Passover, I made a genoise sponge instead, adapted from this Beatrix Bakes recipe. 

Instead of plain flour I used a mix of superfine matzo meal and potato or tapioca starch. Superfine matzo meal is much more absorbent than regular flour, so I played around with the proportions a bit, otherwise I would have ended up with 2 hockey pucks instead of sponge cakes. Just to ensure the cakes weren't too dry I did brush some milk over each sponge.

As it's autumn in Sydney, both figs and raspberries are in abundance so I decorated the cake with fresh figs, a few berries and a dusting of icing sugar. If it isn't fig season where you live, use any fruit jam you like. Raspberry jam is a particularly delicious option. If you don't like the flavour of Earl Grey tea, just leave the cream unflavoured or flavour with vanilla. 

Here's the recipe for you which makes a 17cm layer cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Passover fig and earl grey sponge cake - makes a 17cm layer cake
40g superfine matzo meal 
80g potato starch 
pinch salt
135g caster sugar
4 eggs
80g unsalted butter
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped 

Filling
300ms cream
1-2 tsp earl grey tea leaves
½ cup fig and earl grey jam
1-2 figs, sliced

Topping
3-4 fresh figs
A few fresh berries
Icing sugar

Method
The night before you plan to bake the cake, pour the cream into a bowl and add the earl grey tea leaves. Leave it to cold steep overnight. 

Cake
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C, conventional. Grease and line the base of two 17cm tins with baking paper then dust with potato starch. 

Combine the matzo meal, potato starch and salt together, then sift onto a piece of greaseproof paper.

Over a pot of barely simmering water, heat the sugar and the eggs in the mixer bowl until they are hot to the touch. Pop the mixer bowl onto a stand mixer or use an electric hand whisk and whisk for 8 minutes on a medium/high speed until the egg mix is pale, fluffy and can hold a peak. While this is whisking, brown the butter. Heat the butter in a saucepan over a low heat until the butter starts to turn a toasty brown. Remove from heat, add vanilla seeds and set aside.

Gently scrape the egg mix into a wide, large-ish mixing bowl. Sift over half the Passover baking mix/salt mix and gently fold in with a whisk, turning the mix over while spinning the bowl slowly. Fold in the remaining sifted Passover baking mix until it has been fully incorporated. Slowly pour in the warm melted butter mix and fold in. Scrape the mix into the prepared tins and smooth the tops a little.
Pop the tins into the oven and bake until lightly bouncy in the centre and golden brown, about 20-25 minutes. I usually rotate the tins midway through the baking process. Immediately turn the cakes out onto a tea towel covered rack, remove the baking paper then invert. Let cool completely. 

Assembly
Place the first cake layer onto a serving plate and top with the jam, the sliced fig and half of the cream. Refrigerate the cake for 30 minutes to firm up the cream, then top with the second layer. Dollop on the rest of the whipped cream and decorate with the fresh figs and berries. 

Dollop on the rest of the whipped cream and decorate with the fresh figs and berries. If liked, you can dust with icing sugar just before serving. Refrigerate until serving time.

If liked, you can dust with icing sugar just before serving. Refrigerate until serving time.

The cake received glowing reviews from my taste testers, so that made me happy. I might reduce the quantity of dry ingredients next time, just to make the sponge even more light and fluffy.

See you all again tomorrow with the final bake for Passover Week 2025.

Bye for now,

Jillian