Among chocolate obsessions in the city of Buffalo, none is so fervent as that for sponge candy. Sugar is cooked to a high temperature with water and corn syrup, then furiously whipped as baking soda slowly is added to create a giant brittle spongelike bubble. Covered overnight, it rises like a cake, the sugar’s clout honed to an elusive caramel as its body turns brittle-crisp. The chewy exterior of the sponge is cut away, leaving only the lightest, most fragile inside, which is cut into blocks a little bigger than a cubic inch each, which are in turn thickly robed in milk chocolate or dark chocolate. The experience of eating a piece of sponge candy is unique. Teeth sink through a thick coat of chocolate then hit a spun-sugar center that is at first crisp and brittle, but immediately evaporates into nothing more than ghostly verge-of-burnt sugar flavor that haloes the chocolate.
Buffalo chocolatiers are expert in spinning sugar to near weightlessness and enrobing it in profound chocolate.
Regional cognates for sponge candy, as it is known from Syracuse to Erie, include Wisconsin fairy food, Oregon seafoam, and Missouri molasses puffs.