Hot Milk Cake

Hot milk cake is a butter sponge cake from American cuisine. It can be made as a sheet cake or a layer cake, or baked in a tube pan. The hot milk and butter give the cake a distinctive fine-grained texture, similar to pound cake. Hot milk cake gets its distinctive flavor from the scalded milk that is the liquid component of the batter.

It differs from traditional sponge cakes like angel food cake in that it contains baking powder as leavening instead of just egg whites, so it can be made with butter like a Victoria sponge. The eggs are beaten together whole instead of whipped as yolks and whites separately.

Why is it called Hot Milk Cake?

It gets its slightly quirky name from the technique of warming up butter and milk together before adding it to the batter, which supposedly helps to keep the cake moist.