Ever eaten a White Sugar Sponge Cake or 白糖糕? This is a traditional steamed cake with a distinctive honeycomb texutre thanks to yeast fermentation. Each slice of this, as the name suggests, is lightly sweet with white sugar as the main ingredient. It also has a refreshing and light, slightly yeasty aroma similar to other light fermented dough. You can often find this White Sugar Sponge Cake in Chinese teahouses (e.g. dim sum) and it’s a street food snack in Singapore and Malaysia (wet markets, kuih shops).

Overall, this is a really easy recipe to execute as well, especially if you mastered the right technique!

Now let’s get to some things that you would have to note to make a successful White Sugar Sponge Cake!

  1. Rice Flour
    Make sure to use regular rice flour and not glutinous rice flour. For those who are curious, rice flour is made from the milling of raw rice gains, either white or brown! They’re often mixed up for glutinous rice flour, which will yield a very different result. Notably, the use of glutinous rice flour will create an overly chewy and dense white sugar sponge cake.
  2. Instant Yeast or Normal Active Yeast?
    Either type of yeast works here but I prefer instant yeast for it’s convenience and given that this recipe requires rather straightforward yeast fermentation. However, normal active yeast works just as well, simply set aside some of the warm water and a little bit of sugar to stir with your normal active yeast before adding into the mixture.
  3. Pandan leaves?
    It might be the Southeast Asian in me especially with my love for kuihs. I always like to boil my sugar syrup in pandan leaves to infuse additional aroma and fragrance. This is completely optional, but adds on a really nice layer of fragrance for your White Sugar Sponge Cake

I hope the above tips are helpful for you. Finally, there are two things you would need to note when serving!

  1. Slicing
    Use a well-oiled knife, or even a plastic knife, to slice into these chewy and delicate White Sugar Sponge Cake. Doing so will allow you to attain clean and distinct slices.
  2. Serving and Storage
    They’re truly best consumed on the day it’s made and can tend to spoil quite fast! I recommend for you to serve it warm with tea.

Without further ado, the recipe!

White Sugar Sponge Cake (白糖糕）
by Javier Tan March-23-2025

This White Sugar Sponge Cake, or 白糖糕, is a much beloved tea time delicacy especially for its light yeasty fragrance and sweetness!

Ingredients

  • 1 and 1/3 Cup or 155g of Rice Flour
  • Approx 2/3 Cup + 1 Tbspn or 200ml of Water (Mixing)
  • 1/2 Cup + 1 Tbspn or 120g of White Sugar
  • Approx 2/3 Cup + 1 Tbspn or 200ml of Water (For Sugar Syrup)
  • 3 Pandan Leaves (For Sugar Syrup)
  • 1/2 Tsp or 4g of Instant Yeast
  • 2/3 Tsp or 4g of Baking Powder
  • 1 Tbspn or 15ml of Vegetable Oil

Instructions

  1. At low heat, make the sugar syrup – combine the pandan leaves, sugar and 200ml of the water. Stir every now and then and once the sugar has dissolved completely, remove from heat until it’s cooled.
  2. Then, mix together the rice flour and water until the batter is smooth.
  3. Once the sugar syrup is just lukewarm (not hot as you don’t want to kill the yeast), pour it into the rice water mixture and mix well.
  4. Stir in the yeast, followed by the baking powder until you achieve a batter of a single consistency. Cover with plastic wrap / cloth leaving a small hole, and set aside to ferment for 2 and 1/2 hours (it will be bubbly).
  5. Oil a 7 inch round tray, including the sides, and pour in the fermented cake mixture.
  6. Steam over high heat for approximately 22 – 28 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
  7. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes before serving. Enjoy!

Details

  • Prep time: 2 hour 40 mins
  • Cook time: 25 mins
  • Total time: 3 hours 5 mins
  • Yield: 1 Delectable Tray of White Sugar Sponge Cake

Notes:

  1. If you would like to be updated for more recipes which I strive to create to perfection for sharing and for free, do check out my Instagram, Facebook Page, or YouTube 🙂 Thank you so much for all of your support! Feel free to tag me or link back here!
  2. Best consumed on the day itself, but can be refrigerated for up to 2 days.
  3. Please do not copy and paste the recipe without my permission, but feel free to link back here!

Enjoy!
– Bakeomaniac, Javier Tan