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+ servings
Cake that looks like dish sponges with yelllow bottom and green top with a soapy frosting.

Dish Sponge Cake

It looks like a soapy dish sponge, but it's just a delicious illusion cake.
4.34 from 3 votes
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 40 minutes
Course Coffee Break, Dessert
Cuisine American
Servings 8 people
Calories 279 kcal

Equipment

  • Conventional oven
  • two (2) 7" square baking pans
  • parchment paper
  • two (2) mixing bowls
  • whisk
  • spatula

Ingredients
  

  • 135 g butter (1 stick + 1 T.) softened
  • 120 g granulated sugar (1/2 C. + 1 T.)
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3 eggs medium
  • 140 g all-purpose flour (1 cup)
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 3 tbsp buttermilk or substitute 2 T. lemon juice + 1 T. milk
  • food coloring yellow and green
  • 1 tbsp honey

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 320℉.
  • Using a spatula, work the granulated sugar into the butter until you have a nice cream.
  • To the cream, add vanilla extract.
  • Using a whisk, incorporate three medium eggs, one at a time, mixing well in between each egg.
  • Add flour and baking powder.
  • Add buttermilk.
  • Mix to combine. (Don't overmix.)

Dyeing the Batter

  • Reserve one third of the batter to dye green for the top portion of the cake.
  • Use a few drops of the paste food coloring to dye the batter green.
  • Pour the batter into a seven inch prepared brownie pan. (I sprayed mine with baking spray and lined it with parchment paper.)
  • Repeat the dyeing process with the yellow food coloring for the remaining two-thirds of the batter.
  • Using an offset spatula, make sure that the batter is smooth in the pans. (You can give the pans a few swift taps on the countertop to get rid of any bubbles.)

Baking

  • Bake in a 320℉ oven (160℃) for ten minutes, initially. (The green cake, because it is thinner, will cook much faster. So start checking it at ten minutes.) When a toothpick comes out clean, it should be done.
  • The yellow cake should take an additional five or ten minutes.
  • Allow the cakes to completely cool before assembly.

Assembly

  • Remove the parchment paper.
  • On the yellow cake, spread a layer of honey (about a tablespoon or so), just enough to act like glue.
  • With a bread knife, remove a thin layer of the yellow cake around the edges, so it’s nice and fuzzy.
  • Using a serrated bread knife, shave off the very top layer of the green cake to make it look fuzzy like the scrubber part of the sponge.

Cutting Cake and Finishing

  • Cut cake into equal sponge-sized rectangles.
  • To add soap bubbles to your sponge cake, in a mixing bowl, whisk nonfat milk until it forms bubbles.
  • With a spoon, scoop bubbles onto top of cake to look like soap.

Notes

If you are using celsius, preheat oven to 160℃.
If you want to be very accurate when measuring dry ingredients, you can use a scale.
I didn't have green pastry coloring, so I combined yellow and blue together with a touch of black to get kind of a nice olive green color.

Nutrition

Calories: 279kcalCarbohydrates: 31gProtein: 4gFat: 16gSaturated Fat: 9gPolyunsaturated Fat: 1gMonounsaturated Fat: 4gTrans Fat: 1gCholesterol: 98mgSodium: 219mgPotassium: 56mgFiber: 1gSugar: 18gVitamin A: 520IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 23mgIron: 1mg
Keyword cake, illusion cake, sponge cake
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