- All right, you guys, this is it.
This is my finished product.
Isn't that crazy?
I'm just kidding.
This is an actual sponge.
Hey, guys, this is Inga,
and today I'm gonna be making
the amazing edible dish sponge cake.
So I know the concept in itself sounds a little bit crazy,
but with the everything is cake phenomenon
that's been happening lately,
where literally everything is cake,
I guess I shouldn't be too surprised
that there is also a dish sponge that is actually cake.
I actually first heard about this cake
when one of you sent me a message on Instagram,
and I just remember being so completely blown away
by how much it looks like an actual dish sponge,
like literally like this.
And when I did a poll asking you guys if I should make it,
most of you said "yes,"
and that is why I am here today to make it happen.
So I know that Emma from Emma's Goodies
and Emmy from emmymadeinjapan have done this cake before.
Emma even came up with this lovely lemon cake recipe
that I think looks so good,
but after doing some more research,
I found out that the first person who actually invented
and created this edible dish sponge cake concept
is actually a pastry chef from the UK
who's also known as a food illusionist.
So I decided to give him a call
and ask him all about how he first came up with this.
- Hi, my name is Ben Churchill
known as the Food Illusionist.
I've been creating food illusions online.
I've been doing mainly sort of more traditional
like mirror-glazed apples, beet root cakes,
a lot of TV and video, things like that.
I thought, why don't I make something
that looks so unappealing to people, so disgusting,
but hides some nice flavors in there?
So I thought, why not do a sponge,
in other words, a sponge as sponge cake?
- That kind of reminds me of how
there's that everything is cake phenomenon
that's happening right now.
What do you think about that?
- I think it's great.
It's highlighting all this art that's going on.
It's enabling people to push the boundaries.
People are thinking outside the box.
- Could you also maybe run me through the process
of how you make this sponge cake?
- The main body of the sponge is an olive oil cake.
It's got a bit of food coloring,
green food coloring; that's for the scrubby bit.
It doesn't matter what that looks like,
'cause that's going to get crumbled up.
You don't lose any of the flavor.
If anything, it gives you a different texture of cake.
Foam made out of lemon juice.
You can't tell it from normal washing up foam.
Do you know what I mean?
It's so realistic.
And then it's finished off with an apple puree.
It's drizzled over it, like washing up liquid itself,
and just do a bit of a scratch in on the top.
It depends what look you're going for.
If you want to used sponge, you do that.
If you want a fresh sponge, you just keep it nice and flat.
- Since I'm gonna be trying to recreate this sponge cake
at home, and I also want other people
to be able to recreate this, do you have any tips for us?
- It's just taking your time a bit, really.
Don't sweat over the things
that are gonna come together in in the big picture.
You enjoy it as much as they can.
- Do you think that I'll be able to make it, no problem?
- You'll have fun with it, definitely.
I hope so anyway.
- I'm actually really, really excited
about making this happen.
Food illusions are just so cool.
For the most part,
I will be following Chef Ben's recipe.
It's going to be an olive oil cake,
an apple puree dish soap situation.
For the soapy foam part,
I'm gonna be following Emma's meringue-based recipe.
All right, with that said,
let's get to making the cake batter.
In my bowl here,
I'm gonna just crack in four eggs really quickly.
And I'm just gonna go ahead and add in the sugar,
quite a bit of sugar,
but we're trying to make a dish sponge edible and tasty,
so I guess more sugar is a good thing.
Just whisk it together.
That is looking pretty good.
The next step is actually to add in your olive oil,
and the trick to making a really good olive oil cake
is actually to buy really good olive oil.
So I basically went out and bought the fanciest olive oil
I could find.
The olive oil is essentially substituting your butter.
It smells really good.
I'm gonna add in some flour as well.
All of it.
Some baking powder.
Mix that in together carefully.
I'm also going to add in a little bit of vanilla.
And of course, lemons zest.
I'm getting this sticky, viscous batter.
And what I'm going to do is actually separate some of it out
so I can dye one part yellow and one part green.
So I'm just pouring a little bit.
I'm going to add some lime zest to the green cake batter.
Now, for the fun part of dyeing the cake batter.
Just going to add that right in,
just to make sure that it actually comes out
a more vibrant yellow.
Am I going to get green?
I think this is good to go on my yellow and my green.
I'm gonna put them into two separate cake pans.
Beautiful yellow color.
Gently smoothing it out a little bit.
Green cake is going in.
This one doesn't have to be as perfect.
I am going to go ahead and pop these in the oven.
So now I'm just gonna let it bake and cool,
and in the meantime,
I am gonna work on the apple puree dish soap,
which sounds, again, super bizarre, but is very interesting.
I'm gonna start off with my lemon juice.
And I'm gonna add my sugar, a good amount of sugar.
Some diced apples.
I'm also going to add in some baked apples,
since the one that Chef Ben did
was actually a baked apple puree.
Just start blitzing everything.
(mixer whirring)
Once it looks like this,
I'm gonna add in my green food coloring,
the classic color of dish soap.
(mixer whirring)
Okay, this is my dish soap.
So over here, my cakes have cooled.
The yellow one is this big yellow pillow,
and the green looks kind of grimy and,
you know, like a sponge, which I guess is kind of the point.
Let's start off by trimming the yellow.
That looks like a pretty spongy yellow.
Cutting the side.
Trim off the top and the bottom.
Lining it up to make sure they're exactly the same size.
I promise this is a clean sponge.
Trim this part off.
This texture is already like kind of really spongy-looking
in a kitchen sponge kind of way.
We're gonna put these aside.
Oh my God,
I almost threw my sponge cake in the kitchen sick
'cause I thought it was an actual sponge.
So here's what the green one looks like.
Right now, these brown bits kind of just look like
dirty bits on a sponge.
I'm going to go with Chef Ben's method
of crumbling up his green cake
so we can essentially pile it up on the yellow cake.
I have all my crumbled green cake here.
Honestly, it looks a little bit like moss right now.
And then I also have my sponge.
Now that I have the two parts ready,
I'm just gonna scoop my little green bits on top,
press it down, like so,
so it almost looks like a used sponge.
This also helps make sure that it's just a thin layer.
It doesn't have to be perfect
because sponges are not perfect either.
Do a final press.
This is what I have right now, and it looks insane.
It actually looks like a sponge.
This is crazy.
So this is one of the ones I have that's used, right?
I am going to now plate it up really quick
with my detergent and also whip up some foam.
And making the foam is fairly easy.
I'm using some pasteurized egg whites,
two tablespoons of sugar, and a little bit of lemon juice.
A splash of vanilla.
Now I can go ahead and whip it up.
(mixer whirring)
We're just trying to get it foamy.
That's already looking very dish liquidy.
Going to now pull my cake back in here.
So I'm gonna go ahead and add some foam on top.
I'm just gonna drop it right on there.
That looks like actual foam.
That's my dish soap.
That is actually crazy.
This is crazy. Look at this foam.
It is so realistic.
It actually looks like a really soapy kitchen sponge.
I am truly in awe.
I don't know if this is a bad thing to say,
but it really just looks both amazing and disgusting
at the same time.
It looks like somebody left a used sponge on a plate.
The title of my dish sponge cake,
"It is time to get a new sponge."
So for comparison purposes,
can you tell which one is real and which one is fake?
This is insane.
I truly think that this is so fun,
the idea of like making something look like what it isn't.
I'm sending a picture to Chef Ben to see if he approves.
And he approves.
Yes.
A real test, of course, too is also to actually make sure
that it is enjoyable.
I'm gonna take a little bit of the... ooh, hoo, hoo!
This texture even feels like foam.
Cut right in here.
It really just tastes like olive oil cake
with a bit of the apple sweetness and a little bit of lemon,
but I really do think the biggest draw here
is being able to tell somebody that you ate a dish sponge.
This was super fun.
Thank you guys so much for suggesting
that I give this a try.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video,
that you'll give this a shot too,
and I will see you guys soon.
Bye.
(gentle music)