Бисквит

Until recently бисквит (beesk-VEET, sponge cake) was a mystery to me. Store-bought cakes in Russia tend to aim for mile-high showiness and are overly flavored on the inside with liqueurs or syrups, but good homemade бисквит is a treat. If it's done right, you can eat a lot of it without feeling physically or morally compromised.

For some reason my usual approach (pestering people in their kitchens) didn't help me master бисквит. Finally I found a recipe that spells out in detail what the eggs and sugar should look like at each stage and how exactly to fold in the (sifted!) flour. The little individual cakes in the picture will be the foundation for strawberry shortcakes with whipped cream.

Here's another idea: my mother-in-law makes her бисквит in a round pan, slices the finished cake into two layers, puts sliced bananas and custard between the layers, slathers it all with chilled custard, and decorates the top with sliced kiwi and pomegranate seeds. Then she chills the cake before serving. For some reason this dessert reminds me of the banana pudding of my childhood. Or maybe that early banana pudding was reminding me of something wonderful I wouldn't get to try until much later.

The Russian word бисквит is obviously borrowed from French or Italian, and according to my etymological dictionary Bulgarian, Polish and Czech all use a form of the same word. The earliest use of the word in the Russian National Corpus dates to 1783: a Mr. Novikov explaining what desserts are appropriate for little ones in his "On the Rearing and Instruction of Children."