Unfortunately I'm up at 11:30 at night when I should be asleep. My 5 month old is up having a full fledged conversation with herself and the husband is snoring. So I'm up watching The Next Great Baker (Greggy is too much LOL). Which made me think of another question I had what exactly is Vanilla Sponge. Is Sponge cake different from say a regular vanilla cake. I'm thinking Sponge is more dense and thus easier to carve into shapes, but I wanted to make sure I was on the right track. I noticed on these cake shows they mention sponge quite a bit.

Exactly what I've been wondering - Buddy always says "sponge". Is that just what they call regular cake, or is it really a sponge cake? It's very confusing, because they call them sponges but I don't see any egg whites being whipped into stiff peaks to fold into the cake batter, which is exactly what sponge cake is . . .hmmm. . .

I haven't seen the show, but here in my part of the world sponge cake is very light and airy. Maybe he means something different?

There are different types of cakes, depending on what part of the egg is used, and how it is added to the cake. The easiest way to explain a true sponge cake is to read the Baking911 page on sponge cakes -

http://www.baking911.com/cakes/sponge.htm

I do not know if Carlo's Bakery uses a genuine sponge batter, or if what he's calling the sponge is actually called the crumb of the cake.

Theresa

The link seems to be broken. Thanks

no, I forgot the name is blocked by the system

it's

www. baking 9 1 1.com/cakes/sponge.htm

take out the spaces

Theresa

Sponge cake is a foam cake - light and airy. American Chiffon cake is an oil sponge.

Buddy's recipe seems to be based on US Hot Milk Sponge Cake - although the hot milk is not used .. This type of cake is labelled as "pliable", but I would not think that it would be a "carveable" cake. Sponge is not dense.

Check out his Vanilla Cake recipe: it seems to have a bit more "body" to it.