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7 Professional Secrets To Baking A Great Cake

Author: Glenna Anderson Muse

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I’m the daughter of a professional cake decorator, so while my high school friends baby-sat for extra money, I baked. With great pride I remember how many people from our small town wouldn’t celebrate a birthday without one of my mother’s cakes. And there was good reason for it. Her seven simple secrets always turned a good cake into a great cake.

  1. Add Fruit Or Fruit Sauce

    Long before it became popular to replace the oil in a cake mix with an equivalent amount of applesauce, we added fruit purees along with the oil to ours. The fruit adds moisture, creates depth to the flavors, and turns the texture of a boxed cake mix into a more homespun grainy texture, much like that of a cake made from scratch.

    The fruit puree should always be in the same amount as the oil and the liquid in the recipe should always be reduce by the same amount.

  2. Line The Bottom Of The Baking Pan With Waxed Paper

    Wax paper keeps the cake from sticking to the cake pan when flipping it out of the pan. It also serves as a temporary base to set the cake on when making tortes or adding filling between the layers.

    Take the wax paper and place on your counter. Place the bottom of the cake pan on top the wax paper and use as a template. Now trace around the waxed paper with a pencil and cut it out. Next, lay the paper in the pan after spraying it with cooking spray and pour your cake batter into the cake pan. When the cake is done, let it cool, then slowly peel the wax paper off.

  3. Monitor For Consistent Oven Temperature

    One of the easiest ways to bake a great cake is to make sure the oven heats to the correct temperature and stays at that temperature. To check oven temperature manually, bake a white cake at 350 degrees (as most recipes direct) and watch how it bakes. It should rise steadily up the sides of the pan while maintaining an almost perfectly level top.

    If the top crowns or domes, or if the cake browns before it’s done, the oven is probably baking at several degrees higher than what the setting says. Purchase an oven thermometer from any kitchen store and check the oven temperature by heating an empty stove. Then adjust the setting of your oven accordingly. (Oven thermometers hook onto the racks inside the oven.)

  4. Do Not Over Bake

    “White cake is supposed to be white, not brown,” my mother always said.

    We dismissed all the normal rules for telling when a cake is done. Instead, we used the color test, followed by the pinch test.

    When the cake loses its wet look, and when a white or yellow cake barely begins to turn golden (not brown), it's time to open the oven and pinch a small dab of the “skin” off the top of the center of the cake. If the pinch is still gooey, but you can see the cake structure underneath it (it looks like a sponge), it’s done. That's when it's time to take the cake out of the oven.

    Once the cake is out of the oven, that very last 1/4th of an inch of gooey cake will set from the heat coming up underneath it.

    If you wait until the sides of the cake pull away from the pan, it’s over baked. If you wait until a knife blade inserted in the center comes out completely clean, it’s over baked.

  5. Let It Set For 5 Minutes Before You Do Anything Else With Your Cake

    When making a roast or a turkey, you're told to let it stand for five minutes before carving it so that the juices redistribute themselves and keep the meat from drying out. In essence, the meat is juicier and easier to slice. The same holds true for cakes.

    Once you take a cake out of the oven, let it stand a few minutes to allow the internal structure of the cake to set before flipping it over onto any kind of serving plate.

    Letting a cake set keeps it from cracking and allows the final heat to distribute and finish baking the cake. At this point, the cake will pull away from the sides, making it easier to turn it out of the pan.

  6. Apply Crumb Coat Icing

    This is a trick professional cake decorators use that is rarely used at home, yet it only takes a few extra minutes and the end results are well worth the time and effort. The crumb coat icing seals in the moisture of the cake and can also serves as a base coat to protect the cake overnight; especially when the frosting will be applied at a later time.

    Take ½ cup of homemade or commercial frosting and thin it down with water until it is the consistency of a glaze. It should be almost too thin to put on with a knife.

    When the cake has barely cooled, spread the crumb coat icing all over the cake. Let the crumb coat icing set for a half of an hour to dry before frosting the cake.

  7. Refrigerate The Cake

    Although cakes taste best served at room temperature, they retain moistness best when kept cool and covered.

Recently, my husband and I went to a wedding. During the reception my husband took the first bite of our shared piece of cake and without swallowing it, looked at me in panic. He reached down and scraped the icing off our piece to reveal a browned cake. He swallowed his bite, folded his napkin over the cake to try to hide it, and whispered, “I don’t think this cake decorator knows that white cakes are supposed to be white.”

Mom would be so proud to know that her simple, secrets to baking a great cake have added up to big results―at least with my family.

Buttermilk White Cake

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. In a bowl, sift together cake flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Set aside to be added later.
  2. In mixing bowl, cream sugar and butter together until fluffy.
  3. To sugar and butter, add rest of wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.
  4. Gradually mix in flour mixture until all is combined. Continue to beat, incorporating air, for an additional 1½ minutes.
  5. Pour in to 3 8” greased and wax paper lined rounds or 1 9”x13” pan.
  6. Bake 20-25 minutes for the rounds, 30-35 minutes for 9”x13” pan.

Butter Cream Frosting

Frosting Instructions

  1. Cream butter and 1 cup powdered sugar until light and fluffy.
  2. Add vanilla.
  3. Incorporate 1 cup powdered sugar and 1 tablespoon milk at a time beating thoroughly after each addition until all is combined.
  4. Beat for an additional 3-5 minutes. The longer the frosting is beaten, the creamier it will be.

Crumb Coat Icing

Crumb Instructions

To make crumb coat, mix frosting with milk to thin.

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