Cooking Tuesday I. The do's and don'ts of a vanilla or white cake
Hi, so I upload a post every Tuesday about cooking. This week I decided to start posting them in English as well as Spanish. I didn't post it yesterday because I didn't have access to a computer.
Many people complain about how their cake won't grow or that it's baked on the outside and raw on the inside. Them having the right texture and flavour can be a problem too. And I think the most common one is that the cake gets stuck to the bake pan and it breaks apart. None of us know everything and anyone learning to bake can and will most likely experience many of these things; when I was learning (not long ago, I'm no expert at all) I went through some of them. Recently I attended a course on baking and I learned many tricks and tips to make the perfect vanilla cake; these along with those I learned on my own I'll explain up next.
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1) When you are going to cream butter you must use this beater that is called flat beater, NOT the wire whip one. That one separates the liquid and our batter will have lumps in it; also you must beat at low speed. If the recipe uses oil instead of butter you beat the sugar with the egg yolks, not the oil.
2) The sugar must be added slowly, in three or four parts.
3) When using vanilla, use the dark one for cake and the white for a sponge cake.
4) Most recipes ask you to separate the egg yolks from the whites, since the whites will be beaten until soft peaks form. You should break up the egg yolks and strain them (without stirring, leave them to strain by themselves); a kind of a membrane will be left on the strainer. This will avoid the smell of egg on the cake.
5) When buttering the bake pan use lard and flour instead of butter or vegetable shortening. This will avoid the cake getting stuck to the bake pan, plus there won't be any flour left on the crust of the cake.
6) If you're going to put lemon zest don't put vanilla. The lemon kills the flavour of the vanilla so you will be using unnecessary ingredients.
7) It's important to strain the flour and mix it with a tablespoon of baking powder. If the flour has yeast you shouldn't add baking powder or soda.
8) Usually at the end the flour is added alternately with the milk (or fruit juice if the cake is of fruits like orange or pineapple). Sometimes it's not necessary to add all the milk of the recipe because the batter might be too thin. Milk is added just until when you raise a spoon from the batter and it falls very slowly from it. Also the speed while adding flour and milk must be low or you will be splattered with the batter (I admit, it has happened to me).
9) The vanilla cake can be frozen for up to three months. When you want to eat it you can put it in the fridge the night before or warm it on the microwave for two minutes. The cake must be covered with film in order to freeze it. @yasibit told me that it can actually be frozen for a year and still be edible.
10) After taking the cake out of the oven, if it has grown too much in the middle you can cover it with a rag and press it down. It must cool for 20 minutes before removing it from the pan.
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11) If you want to cut the cake in layers you can use tooth picks. Put three on the side of the cake, one on top of the other, leaving space for cutting; this is so you can know where each layer must be placed. You shouldn't cut it without first outlining where to cut with the point of the knife. You can also cut it with a very thin nylon thread, another tip from @yasibit.
Well these are all the tricks I have for now. I hope you found it useful and if you have any other tips don't hesitate to put it in the comments. I'll see you all next Tuesday with: Plantain Omelet.
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