Baking and Cooling
Cake structure is fragile, so proper baking conditions are essential to produce high-quality products. Follow these guidelines to help you avoid cake failure.
Cake structure is fragile, so proper baking conditions are essential to produce high-quality products. Follow these guidelines to help you avoid cake failure.
- Preheat the ovens. To conserve expensive energy, don’t preheat longer than necessary
- Make sure ovens and shelves are levels.
- Do not let pans touch each other. If pans touch, air condition is inhibited and the cakes rise unevenly.
- Bake at the correct temperature: Too hot an oven causes the cake to set unevenly with a humped center, or to set before it has fully risen. Crusts will be too dark. Too slow an oven causes poor volume and texture because the cake doesn’t set fast enough and may fall.
- If steam is available in the oven, use it for creamed, two-stage, one-stage batters. These cake bake with a flatter top if baked with steam because of steam delay formation of the top crust. Do not use steam with sponge and angel food cakes.
- Do not open the oven or disturb cakes until they have finished rising and are partially browned. Distributing the cakes before they are set may cause them to fall.
- Cool angel food and chiffon cakes upside down in their pans, so they won’t collapse back into the pans. Because they are baked in ungreased pans, they won’t fall out of their pans. When completely cool, they are sturdy enough to be pulled out of pans without breaking.
Tests for Doneness - Shortened cakes shrink away slightly from sides of the pan.
- The cake is springy. The center of the top of the cake springs back when pressed lightly.
- A cake tester or wooden pick inserted in center of cakes comes out clean.
Cooling and removing from pans - Cool layer cakes and sheet cakes 15 minutes in pans and turns out while slightly warm. Because they are fragile, they may break if turned out when hot.
- Turn out layer cakes onto racks to finishing cooling.
- To turn out sheets cakes:
1. Sprinkle the top lightly with granulated sugar.
2. Set a cake board on top of the cake, and then set an empty sheet pan on top, bottom side down.
3. Invert both pans.
4. Remove the top pan.
5. Peel the parchment off the cake. - Cool angel food cakes and chiffon cakes upside down in pans so they do not fall back into the pans and lose volume. Support the edges of the pan so the top of the cake is off the bench. When cool, loosen the cake from sides of the pan with a knife or spatula and carefully pull out the cake.
The chef was her own miracle. She saw a brilliance in food, a potential to help and heal others, a way to show them how the sublime was simply a mixture of the ordinary. It was her genius at play, seeing what the rest of us didn't. I guess that's why we called it her culinary magic and joked that her spoon was a wand carved from the spirit tree. Either way, she made us all so happy, food does that, right? It feeds the soul, brings smiles and bonds, makes everything so much better
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