Bizcocho
The small bakery pastry eaten with mate — the Uruguayan word for the tray Argentina calls "facturas", and nothing like a sponge cake.
Related lesson: Uruguayan Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Pasá por la panadería y traé media docena de bizcochos.
Stop at the bakery and bring half a dozen pastries.
No hay mate sin bizcochos, bo.
There's no mate without bizcochos, mate.
—¿Tienen bizcochos de grasa? —Recién salidos del horno.
'Do you have bizcochos de grasa?' 'Just out of the oven.'
What It Actually Means
In Uruguay a bizcocho is any of the small pastries on a bakery tray: flaky, folded, sometimes sugared, sometimes salted, eaten by the handful with mate at any hour. Bizcochos de grasa, cañoncitos filled with dulce de leche, medialunas, vigilantes, caracoles — the individual names exist, but Uruguayans buy them by weight or by the dozen and call the whole assortment bizcochos. Together with cebar and the thermos, they make up the country’s default afternoon.
Where It Comes From
From medieval Latin bis coctus, twice-cooked — the same root that gave English “biscuit” and Italian biscotto, and originally the hard, dry bread baked twice to survive a sea voyage. Every Spanish-speaking country inherited the word and then applied it to something different. Uruguay applied it to the bakery tray.
How Natives Use It
Plainly and constantly: it is not slang, it appears on price boards, and ¿traigo bizcochos? is the ordinary offer when you are invited to someone’s house for mate. Buying a dozen on the way is the Uruguayan equivalent of bringing a bottle. If you want them warm, ask for recién horneados; the bakery will know why you are asking.
Common Pitfall
The word means something else nearly everywhere. Across the river the same tray is facturas, and asking for bizcochos in a Buenos Aires bakery gets you a puzzled look. In Spain a bizcocho is a sponge cake; in Mexico and much of Central America it is generic sweet bread, and in some Mexican usage it also carries a vulgar sense you would not want to deploy at a counter. Point at the tray until you know the local word — that is what everyone else does.