The Great Sponge Cake-Off 🍰
On your mark, get set, cake!
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! And a Very Merry Christmas Eve to all those who celebrate 🎄! This week, we attempt to find the best Chinese sponge cake in NYC. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Original sponge cake at Spongies
121 Baxter St, New York, NY 10013
In the spirit of Christmas – and not being a Grinch – I’m starting off this sponge cake review strong with Spongies. Now, I don’t usually go to Chinese bakeries for the aesthetic — but I will note that this cafe is extremely cute and has more of a millennial, hip vibe than the other bakeries in this review, which tend to be more old school. Their sponge cakes are the winner for me! Softest, moist taste, and flavored ones not too strong. I prefer the upright paper cupcake shape to them, which adds more moisture. In addition to the original flavor, I got a coconut and pandan one, and appreciated that the scent didn't feel too artificial or strong. In an airtight tupperware, they remained moist even on days two and three. (Note: I picked up both Spongies and Kam Hing around 1pm or so in the day, so they had already spent some time on the counter.)
Rating: 10/10
Original sponge cake from Kam Hing Bakery
118 Baxter St, New York, NY 10013
My friend picked up two cakes at Kam Hing for my testing — but they got squished in the bottom of his gym bag, so I went and picked up two more, since they’re only about a dollar each. Kam Hing is often considered the OG sponge cake cafe, and it has a very Chinatown exterior and interior to match — no Instagrammable fake plants here. The cakes were flatter and more oval in size (vs the tall paper cup style of Spongies above and Fay Da below). The cake is light and sweet, cloud-like with a barely eggy flavor (personally, I think sponge cakes should NOT have too much egg or butter flavor). However, the flat oval shape means it's a bit structurally less fluffy than those at Spongies, knocking off one star, but just barely.
Rating: 9/10, maybe 10/10 for nostalgia
Rose Lychee sponge cake at Kam Hing Bakery
118 Baxter St, New York, NY 10013
Kam Hing had quite a few interesting flavors the day I went, so in addition to the original plain cake for standardized testing, I got one in Rose Lychee flavor. Now, you would think that Rose ✅ Lychee ✅ Sponge Cake ✅ would check off all the boxes for me, as i am obsessed with all things rose-flavored and the cake was even the loveliest shade of dirty pale pink, but this is one of those things that definitely sounded like a better idea than it was. While the rose smelled lovely, it committed the worst crime a rose-flavored baked good can make, which is sort of taste like someone’s grandma’s perfume, or the hand soap aisle at Home Goods. That being said, it wasn’t awful, and I did not regret trying something new.
Rating: 6/10.
Plain sponge cake at Fay Da Bakery
Several locations, this review pertains to the West 4th street location at 321 6th Ave.
Fay Da Bakery is good at having many things (and several locations), but not at any particular one thing. I feel like this plain sponge cake is a good example of this. While it’s not as bad as the matcha sponge cake (below), it’s also pretty unremarkable. It looks pretty when split in half – an inviting pale, buttery yellow – but upon tasting, it leaves me wondering if that cheerful exterior is actually the result of food coloring. A bit dry, the greatest sin a sponge cake can make.
Rating: 5/10, but I could go lower if it weren’t a holiday.
Matcha sponge cake at Fay Da Bakery
Several locations, this review pertains to the West 4th street location at 321 6th Ave.
The day I went, Fay Da only had one type of flavored sponge cake, a matcha variety. While I am a huge fan of good matcha tea (RIP Ippodo Tea!), I don’t think you can really use the word “matcha” to describe this sponge cake, which does not really taste like anything at all. A similar texture to the plain sponge cake, aka spongy but not particularly moist, the matcha variety lacks even the slightest hint of buttery taste, replacing it instead with a bitter edge, presumably from the tea. “It’s a sweet bread that happens to be green,” said a fellow taste-tester, “not sure I’d call it a green tea cake.”
Rating: 4 /10. Edible, but unremarkable – a greater sin than being awful.
Happy Holidays!
Soph
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