All About Cake: A Milk Bar Cookbook

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The additional liquid ingredients were added at a ratio of 7% overall weight (i.e. I found 45g milk in 650g mixture gave me a 'dropping' consistency). Cakes may be classified according to the occasion for which they are intended. For example, wedding cakes, birthday cakes, cakes for first communion, Christmas cakes, Halloween cakes, and Passover plava (a type of sponge cake sometimes made with matzo meal) are all identified primarily according to the celebration they are intended to accompany. The cutting of a wedding cake constitutes a social ceremony in some cultures. The Ancient Roman marriage ritual of confarreatio originated in the sharing of a cake. Main article: Cake decorating Cake decoration – buttercream swirls being piped onto the sides of this cake with a pastry bag You think the recipe or book gives you all of the information you need to bake a successful cake. Think, again. It doesn’t come close. And, the recipe, itself, may not be well-written so that it fails more than it succeeds. Sometimes, if written by a professional chef, it won’t work in a home environment because the equipment and baker’s viewpoint and expertise is vastly different from yours.

The problem with creaming is that it looks different for everyone and will change depending on your environment. Everything makes a difference: From the warmth of your kitchen to the butter's temperature when you begin. Butter is best at holding air between 18c - 22c. Early cakes in England were also essentially bread: the most obvious differences between a "cake" and "bread" were the round, flat shape of the cakes and the cooking method, which turned cakes over once while cooking, while bread was left upright throughout the baking process. [5]Eggs have two parts - the white and the yolk. The white is 90% water, with the rest being made up of proteins that float around doing their thing. The yolk is 50% water - the other 50% is a mixture of fat and protein. In their raw state, egg whites stay watery thanks to the bonds between proteins and water that repel each other. Thanks to the fat, which coats the proteins and helps prevent the repelling behaviour of the protein and water, egg yolks appear a bit more together, even in the raw state. On those occasions when a raising agent is called for, it is usually more convenient to use self-raising flour since this has a standard amount of raising agent already added to it. From time to time a recipe might need rather more (or less) raising power, in which case plain flour plus the appropriate quantity of baking powder is used. Wholewheat flour Ten years later, in the US, scientist Eben Norton Horsford created the first double-action baking powder. This powder was a combination of ingredients that reacted initially as the ingredients were hydrated, like the single-acting baking powder, but would also react a second time when heated, releasing more carbon dioxide, hence 'double acting'. I love the flavour of the fatter cakes - those with lots of fat or liquid - but don't want to lose out on the fluffiness. The higher fat cakes are appealing but flat; A way to counteract this is to use yolks to our advantage. Not only do the emulsifying properties of the yolks help disperse fat well through the cake, but they also help with the rise. As well as this, I couldn't give up the double cream, it just tasted too good!

At SUNY Cortland, you’ll find a unique blend of past and present. From the quaint downtown shops and restaurants to the historic landmarks, there’s something for everyone to explore. Take a stroll through the charming streets and discover the rich history of this vibrant college town. With its unique blend of history and modern amenities, SUNY Cortland is the ideal destination for your next trip. Explore the Great Outdoors at SUNY Cortland A typical scenario for a home baker is to buy a cookbook from a well-known baking professional, thinking that if they follow the cake recipe to a tee, use expensive ingredients and equipment, bake the recipe with a well-calibrated oven, everything will turn out fine. Even without being beaten to a foam, Eggs implicitly aid leavening - they provide hydration. As well as this, the proteins coagulate (harden) as they are heated and form a strong network with gluten, so they effectively 'support' themselves during a bake.Her recipes are extremely accurate and you will get excellent results if you follow them exactly, same thing with the first Milk Bar cookbook: The 7% baking powder quantity is derived from the classic British use of self-raising flour PLUS baking powder. Publishers Text Milk Bar is ready to become the voice of all things cake, with 100 delicious and creative recipes, plus 100 photographs. Higher hydration/oil = longer shelf life - the cake I made with double cream was really soft, even 5 days after baking Some tips: My cake was too defrosted and it fell apart as I was cutting it. She recommends taking it out of the freezer 3 hours before cutting it. I put in the fridge about 7 hours before and put it room temperature about 3 hours before and that was too defrosted. I also didn't do the warm wet knife for every cut that she recommends.

Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate and which share features with desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies. Ask my husband right this moment if he's regretting sharing a birthday cake with me and he'd probably say yeah (our birthdays are less than a week apart, so we've been sharing a cake instead of having two in the past few years). If he knew how much he was going to love the German Chocolate Jimbo Cake I think he would have told me to make two cakes! (My daughter would have also asked for two cakes because as I was unmolding the cake, she was standing behind me and offered this observation: "Hey mom -- I don't think that cake is going to be big enough for the three of us.") All I can say is that everyone is going to be wanting their own cakes from now on! More fat, whether in the form of cream, yolks or butter, gives you a finer crumb and slightly less rise The history of the Courting Cake, a Lancashire tradition". Lancashire Life. 1 June 2011 . Retrieved 9 October 2015.Cream the soft butter with salt and sugar for 2 minutes on medium speed using a kitchen aid. This is enough for the butter and sugar to aerate slightly and become a little paler, but not so much that it is whipped. It is better to err on the side of caution. Let me take a moment to honour Alfred Bird, a chemist living in Birmingham in the 19th century. Bird's wife Elizabeth was allergic to yeast and eggs, preventing her from enjoying two of life's greatest pleasures - cake and custard. I've always known that dessert is a love story, but this just shows how rooted our modern experience of cake and custard is in romance! Bird's egg-free, cornflour-based custard powder and his baking powder formula are still enjoyed today. Quite the legacy. We'll talk more about raising agents later.

Before you even start brainstorming, take some time to research the competition. What kinds of names do they use? What kind of tone or message are they trying to convey? This will help you get an idea of what works, and what you should avoid when choosing your own name – Names Potato. Get Creative The creaming method gave me the fluffiest, lightest sponge. The all-in-one method was tender, too, but had some uneven holes. The reverse-creaming method was also acceptable but had some irregular holes - it was slightly denser, with more chew. The melted butter crumb was fine and even but dense and dry. The cakes all had similar rises, though the all-in-one and creaming had the flattest tops, whilst the reverse creaming and melted butter cakes domed slightly, though pretty. Don't go overboard with tasting individual cake elements while assembling, or you will get a sugar headache. What surprised me was how the whole cake was so much more than the sum of it's delicious individual parts.

Use the Rule of Thirds

So, how to use all this data to build my ultimate Victoria sponge? The tests showed me that the defining factors for a great crumb are 1) fat, 2) sugar and 3) hydration. To build the recipe, I started by noting down all the stand-out cakes and then breaking down the proportion of fat, sugar and hydration. There are those cake bakers who assemble cake-desserts with already-made store-bought cakes, layering it with fruit and whipped cream or layering it in a glass bowl with fruit sauce and custard. Is there any cake more ubiquitous than the victoria sponge? Before I could commit to preparing an entire cake, my earliest memories of baking were fairy cakes. I would cream together that 90s margarine (shout out to my fellow flora kids) and caster sugar with a wooden spoon. Inevitably I would get tired after 5 seconds and pass the bowl to my nanny Carole, who would graciously finish the job. Spooning the mixture into cases and watching them rise in the oven was always an unparalleled pleasure - it still is.