I am making a sponge cake for the bee hive i am doing and the recipe calls for cake flour, Is this a cake i can substitute the cake flour with all purpose and the corn starch? I think that is what i read on here? Or is this one that needs the cake flour?

I will be making this into a bee hive as well, When should i make the cake? Will i need to have the cake made ahead of time before i decorate it? or just make in on the same day the i need to decorate it? Let me know what you think!

Melissa

Here's a handy baking substitutions chart:

http://www.joyofbaking.com/IngredientSubstitution.html

Cake flour produces a finer, softer crumb than AP flour, but it that's what you prefer you can substitute AP for cake flour.

For small projects, I usually bake and make frosting one day, and decorate the next so that everything has time to "rest".

HTH

You can use AP flour, mix of AP flour and corn starch or even mix of AP flour and potato starch. Almost all my cakes are sponge, I use the last variant quite often.

As for baking, you have several possibilities. You can bake, fill and decorate all in one day.

You can bake in advance. If you do it, you need to let the sponge cake cool completely and wrap it well in saran wrap. Sponge cake is a dry cake and if you let sponge cake (unfilled and uncovered) stand, it can dry out completely and become rock hard. Not something you want. Wrapped sponge cake can be freezed.

You can bake the day before, torte and fill the cake and crumbcoat it. As soon as it is filled and crumbcoated, it will last few days. An advantage is that the cake has time to set, as mentioned by JanH. Sponge is somewhat delicate cake. For the beehive you may need to let it set before you cover it with fondant. This was what I do when I make 3D cakes. I bake it, let it cool, torte it, fill it and crumbcoat it and let it overnight (well 24 hours) set. The next evening it can be covered with sugarpaste and decorated.

The sponge cakes made from mix of AP flour and starch tend to work better for me when you make 3D or stacked cakes. They are somewhat ... firmer is perhaps the word.

Good luck with your cake!