Helpful Hints for Better Cake Making
•Always have ingredients at room temperature. Warm the bowl to be used in really cold weather.
•Add flavouring and essences to the shortening for a better flavour.
•Add the sugar to the softened shortening and beat until the colour lightens slightly; there’s no need to beat until the sugar is dissolved.
•Add whole eggs one at a time and beat until egg is absorbed. Eggs should not be cold as they can curdle mixtures.
•In our recipes we will use
•Divide the flour and the liquid into two portions and add alternately with the liquid on speed 1 - don’t over beat.
•If you don’t have a tin the same size as the recipe suggests, her are some tins that are of similar capacity:
Use 2 x 20cm sandwich tins or a 1 x 28 x 18cm lamington tin or a 1 x 20 x 7cm deep round cake tin or 1 x standard loaf tin or a 1 x 20cm ring tin.
•Care must be taken when using a cake tin instead of a sandwich tin to lower the suggested temperature by approximately 25°C and lengthen the cooking time.
•Care should also be taken when substituting a cake tin for a ring tin, baba tin or any tin with a funnel as some cake mixtures that have a very high fat content may need the heat supplied by way of the funnel.
•Cooking times and temperature are meant only as a guide. Light mixtures should spring back when lightly touched and heavy mixtures, fruit cake and the like, should be tested with a skewer toward the end of the suggested cooking time.
Reasons for Poor Results
Sponge Cakes Shrink
Unbalanced ingredients, overbeating of egg whites, sudden changes of temperature or draught when taking from the oven.
Cakes Do Not Rise
Mostly due to gross overbeating, but can also be caused by too hot an oven during the first part of cooking.
Cakes Sink in the Centre
Too much fat, raising agent, liquid or sugar; too little flour; under cooking or slow cooking.
Cakes Run Over at Edges
Too much batter for size of pan, too cool an oven, too much sugar, over beating, too much raising agent.
Hard Outer Crust
Too much flour, too little sugar, over mixing, too hot an oven.
Moist, Sticky Outside
Too much sugar, over beating, under baking.
Coarse Crumbly Texture
Overbeating, low baking temperature.
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