Tengrain’s Little Cooking School: Easy as Cake
As we are at the start of the holiday cooking season, it is time to open up Tengrain’s Little Cooking School, which is a sort of on-again, off-again recurring feature. It all started when a Scissorhead had to take care of his ill wife and three kids, and did not know anything about how to cook, and was panicked.
Today’s topic is a fun one: cakes. Since everyone is broke this year, I am guessing that there will be a lot of baking going on, and probably a lot of cakes will be made. From the box. Terrible, horrible and expensive stuff. Ditch the box this year. Just once. Try it.
Cakes are really pretty simple, and they represent a great lesson in technique.
Here’s the great thing about pound cakes: all the ingredients weigh the same.
Here’s the great thing about sponge cakes: all the ingredients weigh the same.
So, whether you want to make a pound cake or a sponge cake, it’s all in the technique!
And here is the technique:
- if you are making a pound cake, you cream the butter with the sugar first. You want to make the butter as light and airy as you can — this is what makes the cake rise. So the goal here is to increase the volume by whipping air into the mixture.
- If you are making a sponge cake, you mix the sugar into the eggs, whipping them to increase volume and trap air into the mixture. This is what makes the cake rise and will give you that “happy birthday” kind of a cake.
There’s lots of recipes for cakes, and this is a pretty simple one — just for education purposes — and it will give you a plain vanilla cake that is good with fruit (as a pound cake) or can be dressed up with a nice frosting (sponge cake). But essentially, you can make any recipe as a pound cake or as a sponge cake by choosing which technique you want to follow.
Ingredients (by weight):
- 8 oz butter — plus some to butter the pan
- 8 oz sugar
- 8 oz eggs (weigh them, but it should be about 4 eggs and a yolk; room temperature)
- 8 oz flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract
Make it (Pound cake):
- Pre-heat the oven to 325° — and prepare your loaf pan by buttering it
- Bring the butter to room temperature ( 65° – 70° F ) in the bowl of a standing mixer with the paddle attachment, and beat it for a minute to loosen it up
- Add the sugar and beat the butter-sugar mixture on med-high speed for a few minutes. It should increase in volume and be a light yellow color.
- Add the eggs slowly to the batter.
- Add any flavorings, such as the vanilla.
- Reduce the speed of the mixer to low, and add the flour, and only mix long enough to incorporate the flour. And of course you will turn off the machine and scrape down the sides with a spatula somewhere during the mixing.
- Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan.
- Bake for about an hour until a paring knife or a toothpick test shows that it is done. Remove it from the oven and let it cool for a few minutes before turning it out of the pan onto a rack to cool.
Make it (Sponge Cake):
- Preheat the oven to 350° and prepare your cake pan by buttering and lining with parchment paper.
- Melt the butter over low heat, and remove from the heat to cool.
- Heat up some water to a gentle simmer and pour it into a bowl that is bigger than the bowl of your stand mixer.
- Combine the eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla in the mixer bowl, put the mixer bowl over the bowl of simmering water and using the whisk attachment beat the eggs slowly to warm them up, and to slightly melt the sugar — the mixture should be about body temperature; this will make the egg mixture foam very nicely and take on more air. Do not cook the eggs.
- Put the mixer bowl into the standing mixer, attach the whisk and whip the egg mixture on high until the eggs have tripled in volume. This should only take a couple of minutes.
- Remove the bowl from the standing mixer and using a rubber spatula, fold in the flour just until you cannot see it any longer. (You can optionally add 2 teaspoons of baking powder for extra height — but add it to the flour first.)
- Fold in the melted butter — and this fold will also get any remaining flour. The butter will want to go to the bottom of the bowl, so be sure to fold all the way down.
- Pour the batter into your prepared pan, and bake for 35 – 40 minutes or until the paring knife or toothpick test shows that it is done.
So there you have it: the same ingredients, and two very different cakes. It is all a matter of technique.
Merci TG.