Pão de ló
A Portuguese sponge that looks underbaked — which is the entire idea. In the Ovar version the centre stays liquid like custard and only a ring at the edges is set. Two things achieve it: far more yolks than whole eggs and a short bake at high heat. A cake taken out at the right moment sinks in the middle — as it should.
Your own work in that: 0 min.
- Beating the eggs 20 min
- Baking 30 min
- Cooling 35 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneBring the eggs to room temperature
Take the eggs out of the fridge an hour ahead. Cold yolks take much longer to beat and aerate less well — and there is no baking powder here, so all the lift comes from air.
Ingredients: 12 pcs egg yolks · 4 pcs eggs · 250 g sugar · 120 g plain flour · 1 pinch salt · 1 pcs lemon
Line the tin with crumpled paper
Butter a 24 cm round tin and line it with baking parchment crumpled and opened out again, so it sits in irregular folds. It is the Portuguese signature — the paper gives the cake its rippled edge and lets you lift it out with its liquid centre intact.
Ingredients: 15 g butter
Crumpled paper — it holds a cake with a molten centre.Beat the yolks with sugar for 15 minutes
Beat the yolks, whole eggs, sugar, salt and zest at top speed for 15 minutes, until the mixture triples and pales almost to white. Fifteen minutes is not excessive — a shorter beating gives a flat, dense cake.
Ingredients: 12 pcs egg yolks · 4 pcs eggs · 250 g sugar · 120 g plain flour · 1 pinch salt · 1 pcs lemon
Fifteen minutes — it must triple and turn nearly white.Check the ribbon test
The mixture is ready when a ribbon falling from the beater sits on the surface for 3 seconds. If it vanishes at once, keep beating. This is the only reliable test — the time is a guide and depends on your mixer.
Ingredients: 12 pcs egg yolks · 4 pcs eggs · 250 g sugar · 120 g plain flour · 1 pinch salt · 1 pcs lemon
Sieve the flour and fold in three additions
Sieve the flour and fold it in with a spatula in three additions, cutting from below. Any vigorous stirring knocks out the air you built over a quarter of an hour. Stop when the last trace of dry flour disappears.
Ingredients: 12 pcs egg yolks · 4 pcs eggs · 250 g sugar · 120 g plain flour · 1 pinch salt · 1 pcs lemon
Bake briefly at high heat
Pour the batter into the tin and bake only 25–30 minutes at 200°C, checking from minute 20. The high heat sets the edges and top before the heat reaches the centre — which is precisely what leaves the middle liquid.
Ingredients: 12 pcs egg yolks · 4 pcs eggs · 250 g sugar · 120 g plain flour · 1 pinch salt · 1 pcs lemon
Take it out while the centre still wobbles
Remove the cake when the top is deep gold but the centre visibly wobbles as you shake the tin. A skewer comes out wet and that is correct. Five minutes longer and pão de ló becomes an ordinary sponge.
Ingredients: 12 pcs egg yolks · 4 pcs eggs · 250 g sugar · 120 g plain flour · 1 pinch salt · 1 pcs lemon
The centre must wobble — a wet skewer is correct here.Cool in the tin and serve in its paper
Cool in the tin for at least 35 minutes, ideally to room temperature — lifted out warm it collapses, since only the outer ring is set. Serve it in its paper, transferring cake and paper together onto a stand.
Ingredients: 15 g butter
Before you start
Very fresh eggs are essential
The centre of this cake stays only partly set, so the eggs must be very fresh and from a source you trust. Do not serve the molten version to young children, pregnant women, the elderly or anyone with weakened immunity. For them, bake it about 35 minutes at 180°C, until a skewer in the centre comes out dry — moist, but fully set.
Twelve yolks is not a mistake
The popular explanation is that Portuguese convent sweets grew out of a surplus of yolks — the whites went to starching linen and clarifying wine, and the convents needed a use for the rest. Freeze the whites from this recipe; they are enough for meringues or financiers.
Best on the day, never the fridge
Pão de ló is best on the day it is baked; covered and kept somewhere cool, eat it by the next day at the latest. In the fridge the centre firms and loses the custard texture that is everything in this cake. Do not freeze, for the same reason.
