A cook's sponge

or: look at the rise on that!

A good friend of a good friend of mine writes a blog called The Cook's Sponge which is, in part, about finding the ultimate recipe for classic dishes. When the email popped into my inbox this morning letting me know that today's recipe was actually for sponge I had a feeling I knew what my blip for today would be.

I like to think I'm pretty good at making sponge cakes (although these days they do tend to be cut and covered in various shades of icing rather than just eaten as sponge) but recently I've had problems with them sticking to the tins, and was keen to try out what appeared to be a new (to me, at least) take on the idea. For a start, it uses cornflour, not normal flour; for another thing it contains no butter; but - most appealingly - it rises higher than any sponge I have ever made or eaten before. It is almost unbelievably light, to the point of being almost insubstantial (were it not for the cream filling), which is a dangerous property for a cake to have in this house... this is why I thought I'd better get in quick with a blip! Taste-wise it's probably closer to a Swiss roll than a Victoria sponge (not really surprising, given what I noted above about fat content, yet still somehow surprised me!). I managed to singe the edges of mine slightly, which I think have left it slightly drier than it should be... Only one solution to that, surely? Serve with more cream! ;-)

If you'd like to see the full recipe - and some far better pictures of cake - I suggest you head over to the real Cook's Sponge and take a look...