Pound Cake, Sponge Cake, Yellow Cake, Victoria Sponge

I’ve always been confused by the difference between pound cakes, victoria sponges, butter cakes, and american yellow cakes. I think I’ve worked out what the differences are.

Butter cakes vs. sponge cakes

Butter cakes is the broad category of cakes, which refer to the use of butter in the mix. These cakes employ creaming, where butter is beaten with sugar and aerated. The aeration from creaming is the primary leavening component.

This is in contrast to sponge cakes, which have little fat beyond eggs. Sponge cakes employ foaming, where eggs are whipped with sugar to introduce aeration. The lack of fat results in leaner cakes.

The term foam cakes is used interchangeably with sponge cake. I don’t think there’s enough variation among “foam cake” or “sponge cake” recipes to necessitate separate categories.

Pound cake

A pound cake is a cake made with 1:1:1:1 ratio of flour, butter, sugar, and eggs. This refers to by mass.

These are commonly found in American bakeries as loaf cakes. They tend to be moist, fine-crumbed cakes.

Quickbreads are close cousins in that they have similar products but use different techniques. Quickbreads employ the muffin-method.

Victoria sponge

The victoria sponge is an evolution of the pound cake. The difference is the introduction of baking powder to further leaven and lighten the cake.

The etymology of the name goes back to Queen Victoria. She was known for enjoying small sponge cakes for afternoon tea time. The victoria sponge was originally called the victoria sandwich cake (filled) and incorrectly named victoria sponge. The misattribution might have more historical or political context, such as naming the cake for national pride or something.

It’s technically a butter cake and not a sponge at all.

Edit: This post discusses that the Victoria sponge and pound cake share the same ratios but different methods. The sponge cake uses creaming method while the pound cake uses muffin method. But it also acknowledges that definition has blurred and pedantry requires regional context. At this point, it’s in the air when you hear name sponge or pound cake, the recipe itself will dictate its true nature.

American yellow cake

This is the commonly found cake. Think of going ot the grocery store and getting a large rectangle cake for a birthday party. I’ve always been very confused how to classify this cake and what name ot use to find a recipe fo this type of cake.

These are very close cousins to pound cakes. They are close in ratio but have milk as an ingredient. Milk introduces liquid and fat and if you analyze the baker’s percentage, it works out similar to pound cakes.

It might be appropriate to consider this a pound cake variation that uses milk. And is probably a more liquid batter.