The myth of cake baking...

Heyo...its been a long time since my last post on bloggie! I've been using multiply most of the time for now, so please refer to my multiply page for recent updates, hee! In this brand new year, I would like to start my new post about cake baking idea, secrets and troubleshooting kind of questions. Gonna 'reopen' my personal home bakery in this 1 week of easter break, yum yum!

Its really frustrating sometimes when you have encountered some even minor problems. They will eventually ruin your whole day, mood, worst will be loss of eating appetite...You would say, "is that so serious?". Yes, it is...haaa. Here's some failure mysteries:


First - The 'X' fault -- this is when the cake splits down the middle and quite frequently looks like, well, an X. The outside of the cake is cooked and possibly burning, but the inside of the cake is still not completely cooked. These cakes generally have a peaked top also. This is caused by having the oven temperature too high. A very hot oven will form a crust on the cake too soon and this will in turn cause the cake to rise in the center only, giving the characteristic peak. The uncooked part of the cake is being pushed to the top by the already cooked portions of the cake, which are solidifying.

(Pic depicted from www.petrossian.com)
Second - The 'M' Fault -- the sinking cake. You know the drill -- you take the beautiful cake out of the oven and it looks wonderfully risen. Then 5 minutes later, it sinks in the middle. Your oven is too cool. This happens because the air (that you so carefully beat into the cake to make it light and fluffy) is trying to escape, but the crust is already solid. While it is in the oven it doesn’t have a chance to escape. As soon as you take it out, the crust starts leaking moisture and developing pores, which the air immediately escapes out of, and viola! Sunken cake.

The solution for both these dreaded instances is to get an oven thermometer. Just because you set your oven to 350F, it doesn’t mean that’s the actual temperature the oven is. Everyone’s ovens vary, some by 1 or 2 degrees, some by 15, some by way more than that. So get a thermometer and put it in your oven. Next time you will know exactly what kind of heat you’re dealing with.

The dah....here's the wonderful mouth-watering Tiramisu after getting through all these vexations...hope I can make it one day too, haa!

(Pic depicted from http://www.ferraracafe.com/nyc/specialty-descriptions.php )

All the above Q & A part were quoted from the article "Faults & Leaveners: The Intrigues of Cake Making, by Jennifer Dunklee". Thanks for that to make this post an interesting cake issues related article...alright...say 'HOLA' to wonderful cake life...mum mum... ;-P