The best syrups for soaking sponge cakes: how to use them correctly

No matter how well you bake a sponge cake, without a special syrup, the future cake is unlikely to turn out as tasty as you would like. Such syrups are used in almost all baked goods: rolls, cakes, some pastries, and rum baba. There is a wide variety of sponge cake impregnations: from ordinary water to alcoholic. And only through trial and error can you choose the best one for yourself.

Pastry chef Oksana Barcheva shared her successful options for sponge cake syrups. It was posted on Instagram.

The expert identifies 5 main syrups:

• Sugar – water + sugar.
• Coffee – water + coffee.
• Fruit syrup – juice.

• Chocolate – water + cocoa.
• Alcoholic – water + liquor/rum.

How to use syrups: combine the necessary ingredients, bring to a boil, and dissolve the sugar. Cool the syrup to room temperature.

A few tips from the pastry chef:

1. If you are using alcohol in the impregnation, do not boil it. Just add a little bit of the drink to the already-cooled syrup.

2. If you use citrus zest, be sure to strain the syrup as soon as it cools.

3. Before soaking, cool the pastry and let it stand in the refrigerator for 6-8 hours. Otherwise, the cake will get soggy and fall apart.