Sponge Cake Quotes

Mrs Forrester ... sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

The women are young, young, young, liquidy and sweet-looking; they are batter, and I am the sponge cake they don't know they'll become. I stand here, a lone loaf, stuck to the pan.

Her sponge cakes had the aroma of crucifixion.Within them was the sap of slyness and the fragrant frenzy of the Vatican.

I told her that I can't be doing with the Wonder part of these trips, but she said it should be the icing on the cake... I've never liked wedding cake due to the amount of icing, but then imagine a wedding cake without it; just a dark, stodgy, horrible dry sponge. The icing covers up the mess, and that's how I feel about most of the Wonders. They use them to get people to visit a place that you probably wouldn't think about visiting.

though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

BOODLE’S ORANGE FOOL FOR FORTY FOLKS Pile four large sponge cakes into a great big punch bowl. Saturate them with the juice of sixteen oranges and eight lemons.

Never make a big decision which will alter the shape of your life on the basis of a relationship! You may as well take out a mortgage on a house made of sponge cake.

At some point, a cake was produced, with red and gold Gryffindor icing, and twelve pink candles. When Remus cut it open (all the while encouraged to make a wish, but not able to think of one single thing he wanted) he was amazed to find that it was made up of four different flavours – a quarter chocolate, a quarter lemon drizzle, a quarter Victoria sponge and a quarter coffee and walnut. “Like your toast.” Sirius grinned, looking thrilled at the expression of surprise on Remus’ face, “Thought you might get bored if it was all one flavour.

It is often said about desert environments that there is in fact a lot of nutritious food around, if only you know what to look for. Rincewind mused on this as he pulled a plate of chocolate-covered sponge cakes from their burrow. They had dried coconut flakes on them. He turned the plate cautiously. Well, you couldn’t argue with it. He was finding food in the desert. In fact, he was even finding dessert in the desert.

On this occasion it was a tea party. Cook had been baking all morning: scones and sponge cakes and shortbreads so that the kitchen was full of wonderful aromas. And all afternoon she had been making little tea sandwiches—cucumber, egg and cress, smoked salmon.

When she was a girl, and still growing, ravenous, whenever there had been a cake - a sponge cake, dusted with sugar, which Mrs. Hill had conjured up out of eggs and flour and creamy butter - Sarah would never even let herself look at it, because she knew that it was not for her. Instead, she would carry it upstairs to be rendered into crumbs, and the crumbs lifted from the plate by a moistened Bennet finger, and the empty smeared plate carried back again. So Sarah would stare instead at the carpet underneath her feet, or at the painting of a horse with a strangely small head that hung at the end of the hall, or the rippled yellow curtains in the parlour, and would do her best not to breathe, not to inhale the scent of vanilla or lemon or almonds; event to glance at the cake was an impossible agony. And for months, she realized, James had hardly looked at her at all.

Simple carbohydrates such as sponge cake, rice, or pasta make it through to the small intestine pretty quickly. There, they are digested and rapidly cause an increase in the levels of sugar in our blood. The doorman detains proteins and fats in the stomach for considerably longer. A piece of steak may easily be churned about for six hours before all of it has disappeared into the small intestine. This explains why we often fancy a sweet dessert after eating meat or fatty, fried foods. Our blood sugar levels are impatient and want to rise quickly, and dessert provides a quick blood sugar fix. Meals rich in carbohydrates may perk us up more quickly, but they do not keep us feeling full for as long as meaty or fatty meals. Small Intestine When the mini-morsels reach the small intestine, the real process of digestion begins. As it passes through this tube, the motley cake mush will almost completely disappear into its walls—a bit like Harry Potter on Platform 9¾. The small intestine pluckily pounces on the piece of cake. It squeezes it, hashes it up from all sides, wiggles its villi in what we might now call the cake chyme, and when it is thoroughly mixed, moves it on down the digestive line. Under the microscope we can see that even the microvilli help it along! They move up and down like tiny trampling feet.

Mrs. Visser has invited me in for a cup of tea tomorrow afternoon. I should have declined, if only because of how she smells, but I said I would love to stop by for a minute. There goes my afternoon. What a stupid wimp I am. On the spur of the moment I couldn’t think of a good excuse, so I’ll have to endure the mindless jabbering and the dry sponge cake. How she manages to turn the moistest of cakes into dusty cardboard is beyond me. You need three cups of tea per slice to wash it down. Tomorrow I will take a bold stand and turn down the second helping. Start a new life.    A

if she had not been assisted in private by her mistress, who now sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

In the centre of everything stands the huge cake. It has appeared whole and perfect before them for most of the day, its train of sugar foliage glittering beneath the lights. But only minutes before the lights went out the guests gathered around to watch its ceremonial disembowelling. Now the deep red sponge gapes from within.

Driven by heartache, she beat the eggs even more vigorously until the glossy meringue quickly formed into stiff, bird's beak peaks. "Philippe, do you have any orange liqueur?" Marie asked, rummaging through her brother's pantry. "Here it is," Philippe said, handing a corked bottle to her. "What are you making?" "A bûche de Noël," Danielle said, concentrating on her task. Carefully measuring each rationed ingredient, she combined sugar and flour in another bowl, grated orange zest, added the liqueur, and folded the meringue into the mixture. "It's not Christmas without a traditional Yuletide log." Marie ran a finger down a page of an old recipe book, reading directions for the sponge cake, or biscuit. "'Spread into a shallow pan and bake for ten minutes.'" "I wouldn't know about that," Philippe said. "I don't celebrate your husband's holiday," he said pointedly to Marie. "Let's not dredge up that old argument, mon frère," Marie said, softening her words with a smile. "I converted for love." A knock sounded at the front door. Danielle threw a look of concern toward Philippe, who hurried to answer it. "Then we'll cool it," Danielle said, trying to stay calm. "And brush the surface with coffee liqueur and butter cream frosting, roll it like a log, and decorate." She thought about the meringue mushrooms she had made with Nicky last year, and how he had helped score the frosting to mimic wood grains.

FOOD Adobo (uh-doh-boh)---Considered the Philippines's national dish, it's any food cooked with soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, and black peppercorns (though there are many regional and personal variations) Almondigas (ahl-mohn-dee-gahs)---Filipino soup with meatballs and thin rice noodles Baon (bah-ohn)---Food, snacks and other provisions brought on to work, school, or on a trip; food brought from home; money or allowance brought to school or work; lunch money (definition from Tagalog.com) Embutido (ehm-puh-tee-doh)---Filipino meatloaf Ginataang (gih-nih-tahng)---Any dish cooked with coconut milk, sweet or savory Kakanin (kah-kah-nin)---Sweet sticky cakes made from glutinous rice or root crops like cassava (There's a huge variety, many of them regional) Kesong puti (keh-sohng poo-tih)---A kind of salty cheese Lengua de gato (lehng-gwah deh gah-toh)---Filipino butter cookies Lumpia (loom-pyah)---Filipino spring rolls (many variations) Lumpiang sariwa (loom-pyahng sah-ree-wah)---Fresh Filipino spring rolls (not fried) Mamón (mah-MOHN)---Filipino sponge/chiffon cake Matamis na bao (mah-tah-mees nah bah-oh)---Coconut jam Meryenda (mehr-yehn-dah)---Snack/snack time Pandesal (pahn deh sahl)---Lightly sweetened Filipino rolls topped with breadcrumbs (also written pan de sal) Patis (pah-tees)---Fish sauce Salabat (sah-lah-baht)---Filipino ginger tea Suman (soo-mahn)---Glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk, wrapped in banana leaves, and steamed (though there are regional variations) Ube (oo-beh)---Purple yam

The Indian lamb curry centered the meal as the main entree, surrounded with fragrant flat breads. Partridge compote steamed next to a fried savory forcemeat pastry made of garlic, parsley, tarragon, chives and beef suet enclosed in a buttery crust. The appetizer included oysters cut from their shell, sautéed, and then returned to be arranged in a bath of butter and dill. The footman reappeared, and while he set a second place, Farah counted the admittedly obscene amount of desserts. Perhaps they should have left out the cocoa sponge cake, or the little cream-and-fruit stuffed cornucopias with chocolate sauce. She absolutely couldn't have chosen between the almond cakes with the sherry reduction or the coriander Shrewsbury puffs or... the treacle and the vanilla creme brûlée.

Cool green foods became the natural choice in restaurants and teahouses. Matcha, the powdered green tea used for the tea ceremony, flavored ice cream, jewel-like gelatin cubes, and sweet whipped cream eaten in parfaits and layered with grapes, pineapple chunks, and chewy white mochi balls. There were Japanese-style snow cones, huge hills of shaved ice drizzled with green tea syrup, along with green tea-flavored mousse and tea-tainted sponge cake. Matcha flavored savory items too, including green tea noodles served hot in dashi soup, as well as chilled and heaped on a bamboo draining mat with a cold dipping sauce of dashi, mirin, and soy. There was green tea-flavored wheat gluten and the traditional Kyoto-style dish of white rice topped with thin petals of sashimi that you "cooked" at the table by drenching it with brewed green tea from a tiny teapot.

When she was a girl, and still growing, ravenous, whenever there had been a cake – a sponge cake, dusted with sugar, which Mrs Hill had conjured up out of eggs and flour and creamy butter – Sarah would never even let herself look at it, because she knew that it was not for her. Instead, she would carry it upstairs to be rendered into crumbs, and the crumbs lifted from the plate by a moistened Bennet finger, and the empty smeared plate carried back again. So Sarah would stare instead at the carpet underneath her feet, or at the painting of a horse with a strangely small head that hung at the end of the hall, or the rippled yellow curtains in the parlour, and would do her best not to breathe, not to inhale the scent of vanilla or lemon or almonds; even to glance at the cake was an impossible agony. And for months, she realized, James had hardly looked at her at all.

We passed the Irish club, and the florist’s with its small stiff pink-and-white carnations in a bucket, and the drapers called ‘Elvina’s’, which displayed in its window Bear Brand stockings and knife-pleated skirts like cloth concertinas and pasty-shaped hats on false heads. We passed the confectioner’s – or failed to pass it; the window attracted Karina. She balled her hands into her pockets, and leant back, her feet apart; she looked rooted, immovable. The cakes were stacked on decks of sloping shelves, set out on pink doilies whitened by falls of icing sugar. There were vanilla slices, their airy tiers of pastry glued together with confectioners’ custard, fat and lolling like a yellow tongue. There were bubbling jam puffs and ballooning Eccles cakes, slashed to show their plump currant insides. There were jam tarts the size of traffic lights; there were whinberry pies oozing juice like black blood. ‘Look at them buns,’ Karina would say. ‘Look.’ I would turn sideways and see her intent face. Sometimes the tip of her tongue would appear, and slide slowly upwards towards her flat nose. There were sponge buns shaped like fat mushrooms, topped with pink icing and half a glace cherry. There were coconut pyramids, and low square house-shaped chocolate buns, finished with a big roll of chocolate-wrapped marzipan which was solid as the barrel of a cannon.

If I was a cake, I would be incomplete unless I was a yellow sponge from Asia; frosted with brown chocolate from Americas; classy and elegant decorated with fresh white cream from Europe, and satin black fondant from Africa. I would be edible only if cooled in the Antarctica and served at a beach in Australia. No race in this world is superior to another but rather deficient without the other. Tolerance is not love but a chance to abolish any opportunity for hatred. Let’s keep baking in a joyful and tolerant manner.

The bottom drawer. Last chance. Camping equipment. Vuarnet sunglasses, three pairs without cases. She had three, six, ten of everything. Except! Except! And there it was. There it was. The gold. His gold. At the bottom of the bottom drawer, where he should have begun in the first place, in among a jumble of old schoolbooks and more teddy bears, a simple Scotties box, design of white, liliac, and pale green flowers on a lemony-white background "Each box of Scotties offers the softness and strength you want for your family..." You're no fool, D. Handwritten label on the box read, "Recipes." You cunning girl. I love you. Recipes. I'll give you teddy bears up the gazoo! Inside the Scotties box were her recipes - "Deborah's Sponge Cake," "Deborah's Brownies", "Deborah's Chocolate Chip Cookies," "Deborah's Divine Lemon Cake" - neatly written in blue ink in her hand. A fountain pen. The last kid in America to write with a fountain pen. You won't last five minutes in Bahia. A short, very stout woman was standing in the doorway of Deborah's bedroom screaming.

Japan is obsessed with French pastry. Yes, I know everyone who has access to French pastry is obsessed with it, but in Tokyo they've taken it another level. When a patissier becomes sufficiently famous in Paris, they open a shop in Tokyo; the department store food halls feature Pierre Herme, Henri Charpentier, and Sadaharu Aoki, who was born in Tokyo but became famous for his Japanese-influenced pastries in Paris before opening shops in his hometown. And don't forget the famous Mister Donut, which I just made up. Our favorite French pastry shop is run by a Japanese chef, Terai Norihiko, who studied in France and Belgium and opened a small shop called Aigre-Douce, in the Mejiro neighborhood. Aigre-Douce is a pastry museum, the kind of place where everything looks too beautiful to eat. On her first couple of visits, Iris chose a gooey caramel brownie concoction, but she and Laurie soon sparred over the affections of Wallace, a round two-layer cake with lime cream atop chocolate, separated by a paper-thin square chocolate wafer. "Wallace is a one-woman man," said Laurie. Iris giggled in the way eight-year-olds do at anything that smacks of romance. We never figured out why they named a cake Wallace. I blame IKEA. I've always been more interested in chocolate than fruit desserts, but for some reason, perhaps because it was summer and the fruit desserts looked so good and I was not quite myself the whole month, I gravitated toward the blackberry and raspberry items, like a cup of raspberry puree with chantilly cream and a layer of sponge cake.

Whenever Elliot Norther’s wife was nervous she baked. With the murder of Harriet Mason, her husband’s close colleague at the Faculty, she had been unable to resist a couple of Victoria sponges. During the frenzied press speculation about the identity of the murderer, a Dundee cake had appeared, followed swiftly by a Battenberg and a Lemon Drizzle. Since news of the Wildencrust murder broke, the kitchen, dining room and study had come to resemble the storerooms of an industrial bakery, every surface heaving with the weight of sponge and cream. Yesterday, having at last been overwhelmed by the fear and rumour that swept the town, she had taken herself off to her mother’s house in Hampstead, leaving her husband to soldier on alone. When he had last seen his wife, Elliot Norther noticed that she had been putting the finishing touches to an impressive, triple-tiered wedding cake, beating a batch of royal icing into a sickly paste.

With orchards and gardens bursting with delicious Kentish apples, now is the time to fetch out those favourite recipes. Spiced Apple Cake is simple to make and a nice change from a pie. It works well served warm with custard, or cold with a cup of tea in place of a traditional fruit cake. 3 apples, peeled, cored and sliced 2 tsp golden syrup 1 tbsp butter 1 tsp ground cinnamon Sponge mix: 4 oz butter 2 tbsp golden syrup 4 oz caster sugar 2 eggs 4 oz self-raising flour 1 tbsp milk Simmer the apples with the syrup, butter and cinnamon for a few minutes until tender but not mushy. To prepare the topping, soften the butter and golden syrup in a bowl over a basin of hot water. Remove from the heat and beat in the sugar and eggs. Fold in the flour, adding milk to give the consistency of lightly whipped cream. Place the apple chunks in a greased tin or ovenproof dish and pour over the topping. Bake at Gas Mark 4 for 25 to 30 minutes until the sponge is golden brown and springy to touch.

I’m baking a cake. I’m making a Taste Food Cake just for taste, one with white crust with flecks of butter, a smallish one, the dimensions of a roller rink, single level with chewy sponge and jelly gleaming in its own red carpet inside… We like sucking at the sides of cakes, siphoning off the reserves of cream and spitting it out on the pavement. We lap at the trimmings. Suck on the sugar-slicked decorations and swallow the jelly from between layers of chewy cream…

Eat, eat, eat!” the crowd chanted. Alex shoveled another cake into her mouth, globs of icing dripping down her chin and bits of sponge falling down the front of her shirt. “The fool is going to explode if she eats any more cake,” said Spidroth. “This whole competition is a waste of time.

The wedge of cake, sheathed in its tight plastic wrap, beckoned. I sat down and gave thanks for women like Beth Anne, who practiced the endangered art of baking (one day "baked from scratch" may sound as archaic and faraway as "alchemy"). I ate the cream cheese frosting first, and then as I tucked into the garnet sponge of the cake, DWH asked me whether Baby Harper had sent me the photographs. I concentrated on the moist crumb of the cake. I thought about how its flavors- butter, cocoa, and vanilla- had no relationship to its flamboyant color. Red was a decoy, a red herring, and with each bite there was a disconnect between expectation and reality. That was the main source of the cake's charm.

Kent's knock came at 4:30 on a Thursday while Derek was having a cup of coffee, smoking a joint, and eating a piece of sponge cake.

The sun had slipped past noon, and a slice of heat fell through the tree-house window, firing Laurel's inner eyelids cherry cola. She sat up but made no further move to leave her hiding spot. It was a decent threat- Laurel's weakness for her mother's Victoria sponge was legendary- but an idle one. Laurel knew very well that the cake knife lay forgotten on the kitchen table, missed amid the earlier chaos as the family gathered picnic baskets, rugs, fizzy lemonade, swimming towels, and the new transistor, and burst, stream-bound, from the house. She knew well because when she'd doubled back under the guise of hide-and-seek and sneaked inside the cool, dim house to fetch the package, she'd seen the knife sitting by the fruit bowl, red bow tied around its handle. The knife was a tradition- it had cut every birthday cake, every Christmas cake, every Somebody-Needs-Cheering-Up cake in the Nicolson family's history- and their mother was a stickler for tradition.

Guests came and went as they pleased, filling their gold-banded plates with hot breads, poached eggs on toast, smoked quail, fruit salad, and slices of charlotte russe made with sponge cake and Bavarian cream. Footmen crossed through the entrance hall as they headed outside with trays of coffee, tea, and iced champagne. Ordinarily this was the kind of event Cassandra would have enjoyed to no end. She loved a nice breakfast, especially when there was a little something sweet to finish off, and charlotte russe was one of her favorite desserts. However, she was in no mood to make small talk with anyone. Besides, she'd eaten far too many sweets lately... the extra jam tart at teatime yesterday, and all the fruit ices between dinner courses last night, and that entire éclair, stuffed with rich almond cream and roofed with a crisp layer of icing. And one of the little decorative marzipan flowers from a platter of puddings.

As I walked through the fog, back into the future, I made a list of everything I wanted to bring back with me: the heartbreaking indigo of a Greengage night sky, the sugared almonds I'd eaten in the dining hall, the hawing sound Fancy made when she laughed, the smells of freshly cut clover, sponge cake, and loam, Martha's steady gaze, the swish of my borrowed skirt.

perhaps some cherry preserve or marmalade, a slice of dark grainy quince paste, a sponge cake, brioches with a fine crust, crunchy biscuits, or slices of French toast,

‘What’s that?’ Alex asks.‘Today, we’re going to make a chocolate cake. You like chocolate cake, don’t you?’‘I don’t know,’ he smiles. ‘Probably.’I start unpacking the food I’ve brought with me onto the table while Alex sits on a high stool and watches my every move with a smile. His eyes are an ocean of warmth, tenderness and love. ‘Have you got a blender?’ I ask.‘I don’t even know what that is,’ he replies, without taking his beautiful eyes off me, his face one big smile.There is so much awe in his gaze that I feel like a Christmas tree.‘Just as I thought,’ I tell him. ‘That’s why you’re going to help me.’ And I hand him a whisk.He perks up and it even seems as if the shadow of sadness in his eyes evaporates. They are lit up with enthusiasm and the desire to learn something new, which Alex loves like nothing else.I separate the egg whites from the yolks, hand him the bowl and say, ‘Whisk!’He is at a loss for a while, but I deliberately don’t show him what to do and he quickly works it out and starts beating the soon-to-be sponge cake.

They agreed on four flavors of cake- vanilla, maple, orange, and coconut- to alternate, almost randomly, in twenty-one slim layers throughout the seven tiers beneath the one to be saved, the crown of coconut. A syrup infused with ginger would be brushed on the sponge beneath the icing.

She had baked a simple round vanilla sponge cake in two layers with crimson icing between the layers. Then she had coated the cake with a vibrant turquoise blue icing. Across the top she had created a loose, open, basket-weave design in bright yellow bordered with piped yellow stars alternating with crimson stars, and she was now finishing off by piping scrolls of crimson around the base of the sides. It would be a handsome cake: beautiful, but at the same time masculine.

I need something to calm me. Something sweet and rich and decadent. Not chocolate, not pie. There it is. Tres leches cake. A white cake waiting in a white porcelain baking dish. Cream pouring down, not a drizzle, but a thick, steady, heavy stream. Soaking into the dry sponge of the cake. Being drunk up hungrily. Seeming to disappear, but changing everything. Texture. Taste. The cake can't stay the way it is. Without all three milks it's too dry. It has to change.

It was a gorgeous cake, prosecco sponge with a delicate strawberry filling that I'd perfected over the summer. The kirsch liqueur made the flavors come alive and burst into a symphony on the taste buds.

Julia pulled out the lemon sponge cake and probed it with the end of a knife, delighted by how perfectly cooked it was. She removed it from the tray and set it on a cooling rack so it would be ready for the freshly made lemon buttercream icing. Julia had been working on the recipe for her new lemon sponge cake for the best part of the week, and she was sure she had found the right balance between tangy and sweet with her latest batch. Even if she approved of the cake, it wouldn’t make its way onto her café’s menu until her customers had taken their turns sampling it.

SOME PASTRY TERMS Chef de pâtissier: pastry chef Gâteau: rich, elaborate sponge cake that can be molded into shapes, typically containing layers of crème, fruit, or nuts Pâtisserie(s): pastry/pastries Brioche(s): a soft, rich bread with a high egg and butter content Pain aux raisins: a flaky pastry filled with raisins and custard Chaussons aux pommes: French apple turnovers Pâte à choux: a light, buttery puff pastry dough Éclair: oblong desserts made of choux pastry filled with cream and topped with icing (often chocolate) Tarte au citron: lemon tart Macaron: a meringue-based confectionary sandwich filled with various flavored ganache, creams, or jams Croquembouche: a cone-shaped tower of confection created out of caramel-dipped, cream-filled pastry puffs and swathed in spun sugar threads, often served at French weddings or on special occasions Saint-Honoré: a dessert named for the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs Pâte feuilletée: a light, flaky puff pastry Vanilla crème pâtissière: vanilla pastry cream Hazelnut crème chiboust: a pastry cream lightened with Italian meringue Paris-brest: a wheel-shaped dessert made of pâte à choux and filled with praline cream. Created in 1910 by chef Louis Durand to commemorate the Paris-Brest, a bicycle race.

What was the cake you had ordered?" "A hazelnut sponge with vanilla-and-mango mousse. Vanilla buttercream with a fondant overlay and flowers." Ideas flowed and pinged around my brain, kicking up that heady surge of excitement and challenge once more. This I knew. This I liked. "You're feeding what? Forty?" "Forty-five. Fifty, to be safe." "You want a traditional multitier with buttercream, then we're pushing it. Especially if you expect any sort of elaborate decoration." "The cake feels cursed at this point." Delilah's scowl made me want to smile. It was as if she was personally offended by the bad luck, which I could understand. "I could do croquembouche. That's relatively quick and a crowd-pleaser. There are endless possibilities of gâteau.

You flatter yourself if you think this errand has anything to do with you, and not the sponge cake that must be baked for my father’s dinner tonight.

Have you even known it, professor – that terrifying intensity, that feeling as if you yourself have undergone some kind of alchemy, been purified, made wholly virtuous? The brilliance of that moment, the dazzling purity of conscience. It’s possible that the kids who stayed behind at the Provincial Office that day experienced something similar. Perhaps they would have considered even death a fair exchange for that jewel of conscience. But no such certainty is possible now. Kids crouching beneath the windows, fumbling with their guns and complaining that they were hungry, asking if it was okay for them to quickly run back and fetch the sponge cake and Fanta they’d left in the conference room; what could they possibly have known about death that would have enabled them to make such a choice?

The next day was Christmas Eve. In some countries, Christmas Eve is a bigger celebration than Christmas Day. In Canada, Sweden, and Denmark, families open their presents on Christmas Eve. In Italy, they have the Feast of Seven Fishes, during which they eat a lot of fish. Seven, I'd imagine. The French delight in making Buche de Noel, which is a sponge cake frosted and decorated to look exactly like a log. It's a mystery why a dessert masquerading as the limb of a tree would be delightful and appetizing, but they seem to like it. In Russia, on Christmas Eve, they make Kutya, a gloopy mixture of grains, nuts, seeds and honey that is eaten from a communal bowl as a display of unity and a blatant disregard for hygiene. In China, Christmas Eve is the biggest shopping day of the year and they hand each other apples wrapped in cellophane.

Audre explained, “Your pot is a rooibos. I know you usually take Earl Grey, but this will go best with the cheese and berry sponge cake. Which, to be quite honest, will be your favorite treat in London and the entire reason I chose this place.” “You chose this place because you knew I’d love the cake?” Elizabeth almost teared up. Some people would always know you. . . .

Mama, is that Aunt Eula’s chicken recipe?” Emily tore into a drumstick with enough fervor for both of them. “Sure is.” Her aunts had been up since before dawn cooking. The sweets table was piled with pies and sponge cake with fresh berries and Aunt Marline’s divinity fudge. She picked at her chicken, feeling her appetite improving with each bite of familiar cooking. “Can I have seconds, Mama?” “Of course. let me get some for you.” Alaine took Em’s plate to the buffet, still loaded with more food than an army could do away with. She chose a drumstick from the plate of chicken, then froze. “Now, Stella, it’s quaint,” Mrs. Mark Grafton, Pierce’s mother. Alaine stiffened. “They’ve done the best they can— and I think they rather expected us to enjoy a country luncheon.” “But chicken fricassee? For a wedding luncheon? Are they going to have us dance a reel next?” A woman younger than Mrs. Grafton, but bearing the same sharp dark eyes, tittered quietly. “I told Pierce they should have a fish course, at least. And a consommé. Of course I knew an aspic would be asking far too much.” “Pierce always did have an independent streak.” Stella said this as though it were a blight. “Marrying some country nobody when the Harris girls or Georgia Lawson would have—” “Not polite to speak of it now, dear,” Mrs. Grafton said with a tone that told Alaine it was only propriety keeping her from joining. Alaine seethed. Delphine wasn’t a nobody— she was better than any of these Perrysburg ninnies. “Pierce has his career to consider, that’s all I’m saying. She can’t go blundering about, mucking that up. After all, we stand to catch the ill effects of any mistakes she makes.” “I’ve advised Pierce how to handle himself, and he’ll make sure she knows her place. You needn’t concern yourself with your brother’s affairs.” Mrs. Grafton swept away in a wake of heady perfume, but not before Alaine heard her add in a sharp whisper, “He didn’t listen to me about marrying the girl, why do you think he’d listen about a fish course?” Neither Grafton woman had noticed Alaine; they were, Alaine presumed, well practiced in ignoring anything that didn’t benefit them specifically. Country nobody, indeed— Del would show them all up before Christmas. If the best chicken in the county wasn’t good enough for the Graftons, she would enjoy it double.


Stella is next up. Her cake is striking to look at, stacked in graduated tiers, so that it almost resembles half of a bee's nest. It's lightly frosted in that naked style, the icing scraped away to reveal the edges of the sponge, cooked to perfection. A honey-colored glaze drips attractively down the sides, and small fondant bees with almond silver wings cling to the tops of the cakes; a few are even hovering on wire to look like they are flying. "I must say I've never seen a cake shaped like this. What are the flavors?" Betsy asks, and Stella beams. "It's flavored with orange zest and honey.

Do you want to go downstairs and get cake?" She knew it was a way out, but she accepted it, gratefully. She also accepted the cake. It was what Rowan called a raid-the-kitchen dinner, and Hutch more sniffily called eating scraps. Hutchincroft couldn't waste more magic turning human to cook, and Rowan couldn't be bothered. So they had bread and cheese and undersized tomatoes and cold sausages from last night, with the last of the sponge cake and tinned peaches for after, and took it up to the turret battlements as planned. It was late in the year eat outdoors, and the wind was fierce from the shore, but the walls protected them as long as they sat on the still-warm flagstones. The sky above was shifting to purple, and when Biddy tilted her head back, she felt as though she could fall into it. That evening, she loved the island more than anything that could be in the world.

I breathe in the fresh summer air as I pass a table covered with all sorts of cakes---Victorian sponge, Madeira, Battenberg, lemon drizzle. Again my mind drifts to my childhood, this time to the Michigan State Fair, which my family would visit at the end of every summer. It had all sorts of contests---pie eating, hog calling, watermelon seed spitting (Stevie's favorite)---but the cake competition was my favorite challenge of all. Every year I'd eye the confections longingly: the fluffy coconut cakes, the fudge chocolate towers filled with gooey caramel or silky buttercream, the cinnamon-laced Bundts topped with buttery streusel. The competition was divided into adult and youth categories, and when I turned twelve, I decided to enter a recipe for chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream and peanut brittle. My mom was a little befuddled by my participation (her idea of baking involved Duncan Hines and canned, shelf-stable frosting, preferably in a blinding shade of neon), but she rode along with my dad, Stevie, and me as we carted two-dozen cupcakes to the fairgrounds in Novi. The competition was steep---pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, German chocolate cupcakes, zucchini cupcakes with lemon buttercream---but my entry outshone them all, and I ended up taking home the blue ribbon, along with a gift certificate to King Arthur Flour.

There is an advert on telly right now where a lady has strange food hallucinations. The cushions next to her on the settee turn into big slices of sponge cake and the rug becomes a large puddle of chocolate in which she starts to sink in the manner of someone drowning in quicksand. As a portent against bad interior design the patterns on her wallpaper turn into a flock of Iced Rings which fly across the room, just missing her head. You would have thought she would be well advised to find out who has been spiking her hot chocolate with mescaline. But no, it appears that she merely needs to eat a small portion of a specific type of chicken korma ready meal to banish these disturbing visions. I would probably stay clear of cheese at bedtime as well, just to be on the safe side.

So brisk! I can feel the fresh Mediterranean breeze... gently rustling the leaves of the lemon trees. I've had semifreddo desserts many times in my life. But this is unlike anything I've tasted before! And I know the taste of true Italian limoncello. Where on earth did this intense lemony flavor come from?! Is it that fourth layer? What is it?!" "That layer... ... is lemon curd." "Lemon curd?" "Lemon card?" "It isn't curd like curds of milk. It's a dessert spread made with citrus fruits." LEMON CURD A fruit spread originating in Britain, it was intended as an alternative to jams. Egg yolks, sugar, fruit juice and zest are mixed together with a blender and then cooked into a paste and chilled. A centuries-old, traditional dessert, there is even a royal version called Royal Curd. "That vibrant, citrusy tang of the curd has a fresh, refined aroma. Its smoothness combined with the satiny-soft Genoese cake melts in the mouth! What a light and downy texture. It touches the tongue like a feather! The grainy Biscuit Joconde could never be this soft!" "He turned it around! The Genoese cake was supposed to be a liability... but he turned it into an advantage by making it part of an elegant, mature taste experience!" "A British fruit spread, eh? And he put that together right on the spot?" "I'm shocked he had the ingredients." "Fruit curds don't need many ingredients. They use egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest... and butter." "Butter? I thought you barely had a scrap of butter left." "I substituted the butter with this." "Olive oil?!" "Oho! Is that even possible?" "He must certainly know all about it, having grown up in Italy!" "I handicapped myself by choosing Genoese for the sponge cake style. It doesn't have nearly the punch the almondy Biscuit Joconde has. So I turned to the citrusy flavor instead.

Next month? Please tell me they want a sponge cake.” “No, apparently the groom wants a traditional cake.” “Fruitcake should mature for six weeks or more,” Andy replied.

When I was a child, charlottes--- French desserts made traditionally out of brioche, ladyfingers, or sponge and baked in a charlotte mold--- were everywhere. Charlotte au chocolat wasn't the only variety, though being chocolate, it had the edge on my mother's autumn-season apple charlotte braised with brioche and poached in clarified butter, and even on the magnificent charlotte Malakoff she used to serve in the summer: raspberries, slivered almonds, and Grand Marnier in valleys of vanilla custard. But it is charlotte au chocolat, being my namesake dessert, that I remember most, for we offered it on the menu all year long. I walked into the pastry station and saw them cooling in their rusted tin molds on the counter. I saw them scooped onto lace doilies and smothered in Chantilly cream, starred with candied violets and sprigs of wet mint. I saw them lit by birthday candles. I saw them arranged, by the dozens, on silver trays for private parties. I saw them on customers' plates, destroyed, the Chantilly cream like a tumbled snowbank streaked with soot from the chocolate. And charlottes smelled delightful: they smelled richer, I thought, than any dessert in the world. The smell made me think of black velvet holiday dresses and grown-up perfumes in crystal flasks. It made me want to collapse and never eat again.

The bungalow was kitted out with beige walls, beige furniture and dim yellow lampshades that gave Poole the impression he was inside a giant sponge cake.

The lemons I used were pickled in salt for over two weeks!" "I knew it! You used preserved lemons!" A North African condiment, salted lemons are made by pickling whole lemons in salty brine for weeks or months. Because the entire lemon, including the peel, is pickled parts of it can be used to emphasize just about any flavor... ... be it tartness, saltiness, bitterness, freshness or mellowness! "I added the zest and pickling brine in my sponge cake, pralines and even the sauce! Its mild tartness should make the sweetness of the semifreddo stand out even more!

The citrusy tang of lemon floods the mouth! At the same time, the rich aroma of almond tickles the nose! Both flavors are seamlessly brought together with no bitterness or clashing at all! It's sweet and mild and fragrant! I can feel it awakening the heart of a maiden within me! "I chose a Biscuit Joconde for the sponge cake because it matched so well with the almond pralines. It gives even the cake layer the aroma of almonds, without disturbing the flavor balance in the least.

If Takumi is beating the eggs whole, that means he's making a Genoise sponge cake for the cake layer, which has a soft and smooth texture but tends to be flat. But by beating the eggs separated, Mimasaka is probably making a biscuit sponge cake for the cake layer, which is fluffier and will soak up more of the syrup! "In other words, my cake layer will take better advantage of the sweet syrup than yours. I bet you picked Genoise sponge cake for its tender, smooth texture. That's fine on its own, but if you try them side by side... ... mine will taste better.

Okay, next step is making the syrup... ...with this!" He even has the limoncello! Limoncello! That's an Italian lemon-flavored liqueur. Sponge cakes, especially Genoise, are often brushed with syrup, but the standard flavors are usually almond or rum! That he happened to pick limoncello too! "Trattoria Aldini has a specialty that uses this, doesn't it? Your Limoncello Panna Cotta. I hear it's so popular that customers come in droves when it's in season in February. I figured you'd likely use it in your semifreddo.

Raimundo Silva entered, said good morning to no one in particular, and sat at a table behind the showcase where the usual tempting delicacies were on display, sponges, mille feuilles, cream cornets, tartlets, rice cakes, mokatines and, those inevitable croissants, in the shape dictated by the French word, a pastry that has risen only to collapse at the first bite and disintegrate until there are nothing but crumbs left on the plate, tiny celestial bodies which the huge wet finger of Allah is lifting to his mouth, then all that remains will be a terrible cosmic void, if being and nothingness are compatible.

He removes a glove, touches the ham—cold and hard as ore. A pot sits there, the beans frozen in their broth. The cake feels more like pumice than sponge, and two jagged glass stems still stand upright, the wine having frozen and shattered the crystal cups.

The green sponge turned out to be fu (wheat gluten), a high-protein Buddhist staple food often flavored with herbs and spices. The pink-and-yellow cigarette lighters turned out to be yogurts. The lime-green yo-yos were rice taffy cakes bulging with sweet white bean paste. As for the vermilion-colored mollusks, they were a kind of cockle called blood clams (or arc shell) and, according to Tomiko, "delicious as sushi." The jumbo green sprouts came from the daikon radishes and were "tasty in salads." And the pebbly-skinned yellow fruit was yuzu, an aromatic citrus with a lemony pine flavor that was "wonderful in soup.

She doesn’t like alcohol in cakes. That’s Katie’s thing. And she isn’t into gluten-free or, you know, polenta. She doesn’t think it’s right for cake. Anyway, it’s what poor people eat.’ My dad winces, in spite of his best Dr Seuss face. ‘In developing countries like Mexico, I mean. You have to be middle-class to afford it here.’ That didn’t help. When you get stuck, stick to the facts – that’s what Dad always tells me. ‘She’d like a Victoria sponge with lots of cream and some fruit. Raspberries and jam. Something simple.’ He looks disappointed. I can see he wanted a statement of a cake. Like his love.

I wanted something for myself, a cake that was complicated and beautiful, a cake that would take up time I didn't have with enough tricky steps to keep my mind completely off of the matters at hand. I thought about a chocolate layer cake with burnt orange icing and the orange in the icing made me consider a Grand Marnier cake instead. Finally, in a complete non sequitur, I settled on a charlotte. I would make a scarlet empress. I closed my eyes and imagined myself making a jelly roll, the soft sheet of sponge cake laid across my counter. I spread the cake with a seedless raspberry preserve and then I rolled it up with even ends. I was nearly asleep. My parents were floating away from me. I took a knife and started slicing off the roll, but I didn't let it end. No matter how many rounds I cut, there was more there for me, an endless supply of delicate spirals of cake. It was the baker's equivalent to counting sheep, lulling myself to sleep through spongy discs of jam. There were enough slices of jelly roll for me to shingle the roof, to cover the house, to lay a walkway out to the street. In my dreams I made the house a cake, and inside the cake our lives were warm and sweet and infinitely protected.

Kai slices the cake, his version of the banana cake I have always talked about. He has made a vanilla sponge cake, soaked in vanilla simple syrup, and layered with sliced fresh bananas and custard. There is a central layer of dark chocolate ganache with bits of crispy pecans and toffee, and the whole thing is covered in chocolate buttercream, with extravagant curls of chocolate and chocolate-dipped banana slices piled in the middle. I accept a thin slice, savoring the flavors, both of the cake, and of simple joy.

But what really intrigued Gianni was the one dessert that all of his friends had been baffled by- the cassata- a Sicilian cake, originating from Palermo and Messina, that consisted of sponge cake dipped in liqueur, layered with ricotta cheese and candied peel, and covered with a marzipan shell and icing; candied fruit in the shape of cherries and slices of citrus fruit topped the cake.

After dinner the doors of the apartment were thrown open and everyone, whether invited or not, could partake of the "sweet table": slices of cheesecake, bundt cake, strudel, rugelach, strawberry shortcake prepared with sponge cake, honey cake, macaroons, chocolate cake, Linzer torte, nut cookies, lemon cookies, sugar cookies, hamantaschen, prune Danish and cinnamon twists- mountains of everything.

Tiramisu Layer Cake Per Wikipedia, Tiramisu is an Italian dessert consisting of layers of sponge cake soaked in coffee and brandy or liqueur. It’s filled with mascarpone cheese and topped with a dusting of powdered chocolate!

Mr. Bodley was already tottering toward them under the weight of a tea tray laden with seedcake, sponge cake, strawberry jam, marmalade, hot buttered crumpets in a basket wrapped in white linen, scones, clotted cream, almond biscuits, sardines on toast, a pot of beans baked with bacon and onion, a plate of sliced ham with gherkins, a bottle of brandy with two glasses, and—perhaps as an afterthought—a steaming teapot with two china cups and saucers alongside.

When she was a girl, and still growing, ravenous, whenever there had been a cake—a sponge cake, dusted with sugar, which Mrs. Hill had conjured up out of eggs and flour and creamy butter—Sarah would never even let herself look at it, because she knew that it was not for her. Instead, she would carry it upstairs to be rendered into crumbs, and the crumbs lifted from the plate by a moistened Bennet finger, and the empty smeared plate carried back again. So Sarah would stare instead at the carpet underneath her feet, or at the painting of a horse with a strangely small head that hung at the end of the hall, or the rippled yellow curtains in the parlour, and would do her best not to breathe, not to inhale the scent of vanilla or lemon or almonds; even to glance at the cake was an impossible agony. And for months, she realized, James had hardly looked at her at all.

Aunt Jane was in perfect correspondence with her environment. She wore a purple calico dress, rather short and scant; a gingham apron, with a capacious pocket, in which she always carried knitting: or some other "handy work"; a white handkerchief was laid primly around the wrinkled throat and fastened with a pin containing a lock of gray hair; her cap was of black lace and lutestring ribbon, not one of the butterfly affairs that perch on the top of the puffs and frizzes of the modern old lady, but a substantial structure that covered her whole head and was tied securely under her chin. She talked in a sweet old treble with a little lisp, caused by the absence of teeth, and her laugh was as clear and joyous as a young girl's. "Yes, I'm a-piecin' quilts again," she said, snipping away at the bits of calico in her lap. "I did say I was done with that sort o' work; but this mornin' I was rummagin' around up in the garret, and I come across this bundle of pieces, and thinks I, 'I reckon it's intended for me to piece one more quilt before I die;' I must 'a' put 'em there thirty years ago and clean forgot 'em, and I've been settin' here all the evenin' cuttin' 'em and thinkin' about old times. "Jest feel o' that," she continued, tossing some scraps into my lap. "There ain't any such caliker nowadays. This ain't your five-cent stuff that fades in the first washin' and wears out in the second. A caliker dress was somethin' worth buyin' and worth makin' up in them days. That blue-flowered piece was a dress I got the spring before Abram died. When I put on mournin' it was as good as new, and I give it to sister Mary. That one with the green ground and white figger was my niece Rebecca's. She wore it for the first time to the County Fair the year I took the premium on my salt-risin' bread and sponge cake. This black-an' white piece Sally Ann Flint give me. I ricollect 'twas in blackberry time, and I'd been out in the big pasture pickin' some for supper, and I stopped in at Sally Ann's for a drink o' water on my way back. She was cuttin' out this dress.