My first genoise classique - did everything by the book but the texture was rubbery. Can’t figure out what went wrong. Can someone advise?

Sonali, did you syrup the genoise?  Syruping is almost always required, without it the cake is dry. 

The height- are you using the Cake Bible genoise recipe?  Which flour did you use?  Did you weigh eggs, flour/cornstarch and sugar? 

After checking those, my next thought would be to focus on whipping the eggs- were they warmed to about 100F?  Did you whip for at least 5 minutes on high with a powerful stand mixer?

And then the folding, do you think you could have folded too much?  What tool did you fold with?

It’s a lovely cake and worth mastering, good luck!

You should go through all of Julie’s questions as they will be good for trouble shooting.  My guess is that you over folded and deflated the batter, especially since you mentioned you lacked the correct height. Genoise is quite rubbery without the air!  I learned this from a genoise experiment I tried a while back, and it baked into a flat rubbery disk.

Matthew, would you be willing to tell us about the experiment?

I’ve been playing around with different ways to mix genoise. In the one I mentioned, which wasn’t a success, the butter deflated all of the foam in about 2 seconds. It was funny to watch anyway Don’t know why I bothered to bake it, but I did just to see, and it was like a floppy rubber Frisbee.

I did not weigh anything - went by volume measurements. Folded with a balloon whisk. The other problem that occured was the clarified butter formed a dark oily layer on the bottom of the cake and formed an oily crust. A lot to practice and learn but thanks to everybody for their inputs. Of all the things I did, folding in the butter seemed to be the trickiest.

You might find this video helpful:

http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/2009/06/pbs_107_allamerican_chocolate.html

As a master of the genoise rubber cake (particularly with chocolate ones), I’ve always thought it was a combination of underbeating and overfolding. I haven’t had the nerve to try lately, but hope to soon. Oddly, my small, 3 egg genoises never became rubberized, while those with a larger number of eggs did.