Sponge cake is a light cake made with egg whites, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Some sponge cakes do not contain egg yolks, like angel food cake, but most do. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance.

The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife (1615). The cake was more like a cracker: thin and crisp.

Sponge cakes became the cake recognized today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-19th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by the British food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter, resulting in the creation of the Victoria sponge.

The earliest known recipe for sponge cake (or biscuit bread) from Gervase Markham's The English Huswife (1615), is prepared by mixing flour and sugar into eggs, then seasoning with anise and coriander seeds. 19th-century descriptions of "avral bread" (funeral biscuits) vary from place to place but it was sometimes described as "sponge biscuits" or a "crisp sponge" with a light dusting of sugar". Traditional American sponge recipes diverged from earlier methods of preparation by adding ingredients like vinegar, baking powder, hot water or milk. The basic recipe is also used for madeleines, ladyfingers, and trifles, as well as some versions of strawberry shortcakes.

Although sponge cake is usually made without butter, its flavour is often enhanced with buttercream, pastry cream or other types of fillings and frostings. The sponge soaks up flavours from fresh fruits, fillings and custard sauces. Sponge cake covered in boiled icing was very popular in American cuisine during the 1920s and 1930s. The delicate texture of sponge and angel food cakes, and the difficulty of their preparation, made them more expensive than daily staple pies. The historic Frances Virginia Tea Room in Atlanta served sponge cake with lemon filling and boiled icing. New York City's Crumperie served not only crumpets but toasted sponge cake as well.

The basic whisked sponge cake contains no fat. It is made by whisking egg whites and caster sugar and gently folding in flour. The process of whisking egg whites incorporates air bubbles to create a foam by agitating the protein albumen to create a partially coagulated membrane, making the egg whites stiffer and increasing their volume. This type of cake, also called foam cake, depends on aeration of eggs and heat to rise. Some types of sponges are baked in ungreased pans to improve the cake's rise by allowing the batter to adhere and climb the sides of the pan. To maintain the moisture of the cake it is sometimes made with potato flour.

Variations on the basic sponge sometimes add butter or egg yolks to moisten the cake. For Genoise cake, flour and melted butter are added to the egg mixture for a moister cake. The "biscuit" sponge from early American cuisine is made by beating egg yolks with sugar, then alternately folding in whisked egg whites and flour. Anne Willan says both types of sponge cake are represented in French cuisine. According to Willan "sponge may have some butter added, but not much or it will not rise". Cream of tartar or baking soda is recommended by some turn-of-the-20th-century cookbooks to make Swiss rolls more pliable and easier to roll.

For some cakes, like the Victoria sponge, fat and sugar are creamed before eggs and flour are incorporated into the batter, similar to pound cake. In British English, layer cakes like the Victoria sponge are called "sandwich sponge". This type of buttery cake was not possible without baking powder, which was discovered by English food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843, allowing the sponge to rise higher.