A génoise cake (pronounced [ʒenwaːz]; Genoese cake or Genovese cake) is an Italian sponge cake named after the city of Genoa and closely associated with Italian and French cuisine that does not use any chemical leavening, instead using air suspended in the batter during mixing to give volume to the cake. Génoise is not the same thing as pain de Gênes, which is an almond cake; however, Génoise is very close in composition and basic use to pan di Spagna ("Spanish bread"), an Italian sponge cake.
It is a whole-egg cake, unlike some other sponge cakes that beat their yolks and whites of the eggs separately; the eggs, and sometimes extra yolks, are beaten with sugar and heated at the same time using bain-marie or flame, to a stage known to patissiers as "ribbon stage". Génoise is generally a fairly lean cake, getting most of its fat from egg yolks, but some recipes also add in melted butter before baking.
Génoise is a basic building block of much French pâtisserie and is used for making several different types of cake. The batter usually is baked to form a thin sheet. A 1884 cookbook gives a simple recipe for a génoise:[1]
When finished baking the sheet is rolled while still warm (to make jelly rolls or Bûches de Noël), or cut and stacked into multiple layers or line a mold to be filled with a frozen dessert. A variety of fillings are used, such as jelly, chocolate, fruit, pastry cream, and whipped cream. The génoise can be piped in strips to make ladyfingers or into molds to make madeleines.
The cake is notable for its elastic and somewhat dry texture, and is sometimes soaked with flavored syrups or liqueurs and often served with a buttercream frosting. The popular tiramisu cake may be made with ladyfingers or a génoise sheet.
A chocolate génoise can be made by substituting cocoa powder for some of the flour, and is sometimes used as a substitute for the richer cake used in the standard Sacher torte recipe.