If you’ve been looking for an eggless tea-time recipe, your search stops here with the best vanilla sponge cake!
There’s nothing which hits the spot quite like a slice of this light and spongy tea cake, especially when paired with a hot cuppa tea and an engrossing book to thumb through! It’s perfectly satisfying on its own, but to up the ante, you can also use this cake as the base for our eggless tiramisu sponge cake recipe.
Tips For Baking The Best Eggless Vanilla Sponge Cake
- Use a good quality vanilla extract: Most of what you’ll find on the shelves are poor or even fake imitations, flavoured with synthetically-produced vanillin (the key flavour compound in real vanilla). Needless to say if you’re not using the real thing, you’ll fall rather short of the complexity that pure vanilla extract can add. I use Sprig’s Extract of Natural Bourbon Vanilla, which I highly recommend for its signature flavours of Madagascan Vanilla Beans. Read more about the uses of vanilla extract (including beyond baking!), here.
- Don’t over-mix the batter: If you over-mix the batter when folding in the dry ingredients, you will inevitably end up with a dense texture instead of the light and fluffy one we are going for to make the best eggless vanilla sponge cake!
- Don’t over-bake this cake: Keep a close eye on the timer, as you will want to remove this cake when the tops are golden and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out mostly clean, with a few moist crumbs attached. This is a small-batch recipe, intended to be baked in a 6″ cake tin or small loaf pan. If you are doubling the ingredients to bake it in a larger baking tin, do note that it will take longer to bake.
How To Serve This Vanilla Sponge Cake
You could use this sponge cake as a substitute for lady fingers in tiramisu, thus making an eggless tiramisu sponge cake! If you are using the recipe below, please do note that you would need to scale up the ingredients listed for this sponge cake by a factor of at least 2.5 to bake a larger cake.

While this cake is perfectly-satisfying on its own, you can always choose from our delicious frosting recipes to elevate it with classic French buttercream swirls on top or even a vanilla ganache. Browse our frosting recipes, here.


Eggless Vanilla Sponge Cake
Ingredients
- ½ cup + 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- 2½ tbsp butter, softened
- 2 tbsp caster sugar
- ¼ cup condensed milk
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- ¼ cup milk
- ½ tsp vinegar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180C and line a small loaf tin/ 6” round cake tin, greasing well. Set aside.
- Stir the vinegar into the milk and set aside.
- Beat the butter and condensed milk together until soft and creamy.
- Beat in the sugar and vanilla extract.
- Whisk in the vinegar & milk mixture.
- Sift the dry ingredients into this wet mixture and gently fold until combined. The batter will be thick.
- Pour the batter into the prepped cake tin and smoothen the top.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes until the tops are golden and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out mostly clean, with a few moist crumbs attached.
- Let the sponge cake cool down on a wire rack before slicing and serving!
Notes
Enjoyed This Recipe?
You may also like to browse…


We’d love to hear from you! Do let us know if you try this recipe – you can leave a comment below and/ or tag us in your delicious creations on Instagram @the_foodiediaries.
Latest Instagram Posts
Browse More Recipes
Get the latest reviews, recipes & recommendations, delivered straight to your inbox:
Hi. Just a question about eggless sponge and generally about your recipes
I am in Australia and we usually use self raising flour for cakes, biscuits etc
So the baking powder is included. Are recipes ok to use sr flour and no
powder? Cheers Shirley Peake
Hello! Thanks for dropping a hello 🙂 I would suggest first working out how much baking powder your self raising flour already has, once measured out for the relevant recipe. Then simply adjust the additional baking powder added !