CakeLove: How to Bake Cakes from Scratch

by Warren Brown, Renée Comet (Photographer)

Overview

Conquer your fear of flour with a cookbook that “takes the intimidation factor out of baking with easy-to-follow recipes” (Publishers Weekly).
 
Warren Brown, the founder of CakeLove bakeries, wants you to bake your cake and eat it too—and even better, enjoy the moment in which you present your made-from-scratch masterpiece to bedazzled, hungry-eyed family and friends.
 
For Brown, love and baking are inseparable. After all, he abandoned his unfulfilling career in law to do the work he finds truly emotionally satisfying. Every page of CakeLove communicates that satisfaction, as well as Brown’s can-do approach to the art of baking. As he points out, baking cakes isn’t a cakewalk, but it’s not rocket science, either—and getting it right isn’t nearly as hard as you think.
 
With an “entertaining” style (Publisher Weekly), gentle guidance, and clear information on ingredients, equipment, and techniques, CakeLove teaches you how to make pound cakes, butter cakes, sponge cakes, cupcakes, glazes, frostings, fillings, meringues, and more!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613122624
Publisher:	ABRAMS, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Warren Brown left a career in law to pursue his love of baking and opened his first bakery in 2002. He is the author of CakeLove and United Cakes of America, and lives with his family in Washington, DC.

Renée Comet is a noted photographer who specializes in food and still-life photography. A cook herself, Comet has a particular passion for cookbooks and has photographed more than thirty, including The Artful Pie and The Joy of Cooking. She is also a regular contributor to Vegetarian Times, Food Arts, and the Washington Post.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

POUND CAKES

One of my fondest memories about cake is eating a 7UP pound cake made from scratch.

The humble pound cake is the perfect cake for me. It can be eaten in big bites. Its flavors are straightforward. It looks impressive. And, it's easy to bake. One of my fondest memories about cake is eating a 7UP pound cake made from scratch. My mom's friend, Sarah Whitehead, baked it and shared it with my sisters and me when we visited one afternoon. I couldn't believe it tasted so good! I know I had seconds and probably tried to sneak thirds.

While the focus of this chapter is pound cakes, the recipes in the Butter Cakes share many of the same directions. The biggest difference is that pound cakes require more ingredients, so the mixing time will be longer. The following section gives step-by-step instructions for mixing both types of cake.

Preheat the oven to 335°F convection or 350°F conventional.

Don't put cake batter into a cold oven. Cake batter is made up of ingredients suspended around pockets of air. Air is one of the most important components of the cake, so catering to its needs at all stages is essential for success. Heat needs to hit the batter from all directions right from the start so that the air trapped in the batter during the mixing process can start expanding.

Place the rack in the middle of the oven. Note, however, that for baking cupcakes at high altitude, racks should be placed on the top and bottom shelves. Every oven behaves a little differently from the next, so the advice given here may not apply to your oven. The main idea is to avoid hot spots in the oven and to separate or provide enough space around the cakes so that the airflow is not blocked, especially in convection ovens, which bake your cake by circulating hot air around it.

Prepare the ingredients and set out the equipment.

Don't start the mixer until all the ingredients are ready for action. The culinary term for this is mise en place — everything in its place — and it's a sound practice in the kitchen that helps you to avoid errors. Mistakes happen. It's easy to forget where you are in the recipe once the mixer starts. I have been known to forget to add chocolate chips to the chocolate chip cookie dough if I'm not careful! So I strongly suggest that you measure the ingredients, place them in prep bowls, and set them aside for use. It takes a little longer, but I do it all of the time because it helps me maintain control over what I'm doing.

Starter Cake

Pound cake was my starter cake. I found the county fair – winning recipe published in the local newspaper and went for it. I baked one for my Grandma Sallie's birthday and brought it to her in Philadelphia, where my family had a party for her on one of those riverboat tours with cheesy singing and dancing numbers — and we all loved it! She used to make pound cake when she visited. I don't remember watching her bake it, but I sure do remember eating it.

Whenever I teach a class, I always fall back on pound cake because it's almost foolproof, the ingredients are readily available, and it bakes evenly (especially in a Bundt pan). I also like it because once it's out of the oven, it can be served plain or with minimal finishing touches. Share some of the pound cakes in this book with your friends or coworkers — they'll love you for it!

"LCD" Vanilla Pound Cake ingredients

Sift the flour and weigh it on a scale.

Notice that I did not say "scoop and level" to measure the flour. Scooping and leveling is a common method for measuring, but I strongly disagree with it. One of the problems I see and taste frequently is too much flour in cake. Since most recipes call for scooping and leveling, I'm inclined to believe that it's responsible for pasty, dense cake. It's really easy to inadvertently compress more flour into the measuring cup than you want with the scoop-and-level technique. In fact, not compressing the flour is almost impossible. If I scoop, level, and then sift, there's 30% more flour in my mixing bowl than if I sifted directly into a bowl placed on a scale.* That's way too much flour and will permanently throw any batter out of balance. Skip all of this fuss, and weigh the ingredients on a scale. I know people resist doing this, but it's the easiest and best thing you can do to improve your baking.

Sifting helps break up the flour, thereby lightening the batter. Some people rely on the manufacturer's promise that sifting isn't necessary because it's done at the factory. Well, they may sift at the factory, but since we're not buying at the factory it's guaranteed to settle during shipping. Please sift.

In the interest of time and accuracy, sift the flour directly into a bowl set on your kitchen scale. If you don't have a scale, please consider buying one. When I did, everything I baked went from average to better than ever.

* This is so important it warrants an asterisk!

To test whether flour compacts during scooping and leveling, I compared two equivalent volume measurements of all-purpose flour and found that their mass was not the same. First I measured out 4 tablespoons, which weighed 24 grams. Next I scooped and leveled ¼ cup, which registered 32 grams — that's a full 30% more, and a serious problem when it comes to baking.

Whisk the ingredients to blend.

Once you've measured the dry and liquid ingredients in separate prep bowls, whisking each for about 10 seconds to blend before introducing them into the batter is very important. This way you're not relying only on the flat paddle to do all of the mixing, which can overwork the batter. If you whisk the dry ingredients first followed by the liquid ingredients, only one whisk gets dirty.

Cream the butter and sugar.

OK, this is a major step. Please give this your careful attention.

Creaming applies to pound cakes and butter cakes and means incorporating air into the butter and sugar. When I started baking I thought it meant to pour heavy cream into the batter! Not quite. In baking lingo, creaming is a way of saying "adding air." It's a total misnomer but has stuck so we have to live with it.

Aerating the batter properly allows it to rise and contributes greatly to a cake's delicate texture. Even though the proportions of sugar and butter change from one recipe to the next, the process remains the same: Combine the room temperature unsalted butter and extra-fine granulated sugar in the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment on low speed. Sugar pushes and pulls air into the soft butter with each turn of the paddle so going slowly is essential.

Creaming can't be rushed. It can take anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes to get the right amount of air into the butter and sugar combination. The butter should be at room temperature (about 72°F). Let it come to room temperature on it's own — don't microwave it. Cold butter is too hard for sugar to penetrate, but super-soft or heated butter won't provide enough resistance to retain any air. Humidity, altitude, even barometric pressure, all have an effect on how long creaming will take, but temperature has the greatest effect.

Don't set the mixer on too high a speed either. Too much speed beats the air out of the butter and sugar. With my first standing mixer I beat the heck out of the butter and sugar on high speed and couldn't understand what went wrong. The problem was that I went too fast. No air mixed into the combination — it was just flat, mashed butter and sugar. I advise mixing on the lowest setting. It'll seem like it takes forever, but that gives you plenty of time to clean up or prepare another part of the recipe. Once you're more comfortable with the process you can speed it up a bit if you wish, but always keep it under medium speed.

Add the eggs one at a time.

Every baking recipe is standardized so that the volume of egg whites and yolks is equal to that found in large eggs. Keep this in mind when shopping for ingredients or when scavenging for eggs from your neighbors.

Crack each egg into a small prep bowl and remove any shells with a small measuring spoon. Once you begin adding the eggs, the process will move fairly quickly and it's important to focus on the batter. Add the eggs one at a time. Don't beat them ahead of time because waiting for the yolk to break and disperse is an important element in mixing the batter. Sometimes the yolk slides around the beater without breaking — that's OK. Once the yolk is broken and blended in, add the next egg or yolk.

Scraping down the sides of the bowl after adding the eggs may be necessary. There is usually a lot of butter and sugar stuck to the sides of the bowl. When you scrape the sides, notice the difference in color between the almost white batter stuck to the sides and the yellowish, eggy mix in the middle of the bowl. Scraping after adding the eggs helps avoid overbeating in the next steps.

Alternate adding the dry and liquid ingredients.

When adding ingredients to the batter, it's best to start and end with the dry ingredients. It's not a problem if you accidentally start with the liquid ingredients or lose track of what ingredient was last added. What matters is to watch carefully for overmixing. It's important to neither overwhelm nor underwhelm the batter with the ingredients. Add just enough ingredients so the batter can absorb them without too much effort — about 4 to 5 revolutions of the mixer's paddle. To get it right you'll really have to watch the batter because it changes constantly. Add about ½ cup of the dry ingredients in 2 to 3 scoops followed by about a third of the liquid ingredients. As soon as the liquid ingredients are blended in, add the next few scoops of dry ingredients, and so on. It should take about 60 seconds to complete this series of steps. Look around to make sure all of your prep bowls are empty. Once you're sure everything has been added, turn off the mixer and scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula. Mix on medium speed for the final mix of 20 to 60 seconds, or as indicated by the recipe.

Stages of Creaming

Creaming is a baker's verb for slowly combining sugar and butter for the purpose of driving air into the base of the cake batter. It's the first step in most pound cakes and butter cakes and it can be confusing. Cake batter is really just a bunch of ingredients suspended around air bubbles, so the process of aerating the batter is very important.

Follow these visual cues through the three stages of creaming:

Dancing — The butter and sugar slide loosely around the bowl without combining, almost like they're trying to avoid each other.

Clumping — Both ingredients clump together on the beater in large chunks and stay away from the sides of the bowl.

Coating — The mass falls away from the beater and coats the lower portion of the bowl. The mixture will be white with a fluffy, slightly grainy texture, and the volume of the butter and sugar will have increased due to the incorporation of air.

Dancing

Clumping

Coating

Cream the butter and sugar

Add the eggs

Scrape the sides of the bowl

Alternate dry and liquid ingredients

Scrape again and mix to combine

Spray the cake pan

Deposit the batter

Prepare the pans.

Bundt pans, or brioche pans for Crunchy Feet, should always be evenly coated with nonstick spray. Pan sprays will save you time and trouble when trying to remove the cake from the pan. Spray evenly in a side-to-side motion to hit all of the crevices. I strongly recommend using a spray that contains a combination of oil and starch instead of just oil. And I'd advise against using butter and dusting the pan with flour — that makes a complete mess.

A lot of bakeware is nonstick, but I prefer aluminum pans. Nonstick bakeware denies the cake a surface against which the sugars can cling to. The sugars then connect with one another, sometimes creating a very tough exterior on the cake. I've noticed this repeatedly in nonstick brioche pans when baking Bundts. Every specialty shaped pan with lots of crevices requires a heavy dose of nonstick spray. You can also drop in a little extra sugar and some nuts to create an exciting streusel topping for your favorite Bundt cake.

Deposit the batter into the pan in three spots to help ensure an even distribution. I always try to deposit the batter roughly at the end points of the shape of the letter Y. When I can remember to do this, it works wonderfully. If you forget, don't worry about it. The batter will slide into place once the pan is in the oven.

Check for doneness.

Always check the bake times for each recipe. In addition, looking for color cues can be helpful but somewhat confusing because the cues can change from batter to batter. In general, blonde batters will have golden-brown edges and creamy-colored or browned tops; a chocolate batter will develop an even brown color across the top. I prefer to judge by appearance. The top of the cake should appear smooth and not liquid. It won't glisten when the oven light is turned on. Also, it won't jiggle when the pan is moved or bumped. Finally, gently insert a wooden skewer into the center of the cake when the color looks right and it's not jiggling. Remove the cake from the oven when the skewer comes out clean or with just a few crumbs on it.

Both amateur and professional pastry chefs tell me that they don't smell the item they're baking until it's just about done. It happens to me, too, even at the bakery where we're baking all day. Customers will walk into the bakery and remark on the glorious smell of the chocolate cake that's in the oven, but I can't smell it. Not until it's about a minute away from being done does the smell hit me. I can't explain it, but it happens all the time!

Remove the cake from the oven.

A freshly baked, hot cake is very delicate. I put my cake pans or cake on a cooling rack if I have one available, but it's not necessary. Placing a hot cake pan on any heat-resistant surface is fine.

Let 9-x-2-inch cake rounds, Bundt cakes, and cupcakes cool until the pans can be handled with bare hands and then remove them. Crunchy Feet should be removed from their pans while they are still quite warm, no more than 5 minutes after removing from the oven. If they cool too long in the pan, they will stick.

All cakes should be thoroughly cooled to room temperature before wrapping in plastic, otherwise condensation will form and ruin the texture of the cake.

Pound Cake Recipe Comparison

The chart below illustrates the notable differences between a traditional pound cake recipe and my recipe. My sugar-to-flour ratio is often the inverse of what some recipes call for. I've tasted many pound cakes and they're usually burdened with too much flour, so the flavor comes out pasty, and with too little sugar so the crumb is too tight. Increasing the amount of sugar and pulling back on the amount of flour are steps in the right direction to achieve the texture I enjoy.

What Are Crunchy Feet?

Crunchy Feet are little pound cakes baked in small (2-ounce) brioche pans. They are so named because they have lots of toes, or ruffled edges, that get a little crunchy when they bake. When I turned out a whole bunch of them on a table, they looked like little creatures that would scurry around. Thus the name "Crunchy Feet" was born. It's an odd stretch, I know, but this is baking after all — we're having fun.

When I was experimenting with Bundt cakes in the early days while I still practiced law, Crunchy Feet were the tester cakes for the actual Bundt. Baking the tester in a brioche pan helped me understand how the cake tasted and whether the structure was too tough or too weak. I was making up recipes for the first time back then and was really unsure of the outcome of each one so I needed a test cake. The brioche pan was ideal because it baked quickly and showed me whether the center of the cake would collapse. If it collapsed, the batter had either too much fat or too little flour.

As I continued to bake and use the test cakes, I realized that they were fun to serve and really cute. It also came to my attention that plenty of people like cake, but not frosting. Satisfaction in one bite became my next goal for Crunchy Feet. Innovative flavors and crazy names to make them inviting got the best of me and soon I was mixing mango, orange, and cayenne pepper into one batter (Sassy), or ginger, lime, molasses, and honey in another one (Gingerly). I kept going, and found the whole idea of unusually flavored pound cakes a blast. They're fragile when they're warm, though, so be careful not to break off any toes when removing them from the pans.

That's Crunchy Feet. Utilitarian, kind of random, and baked expressly for people who love cake without frosting.

"LCD" Vanilla Pound Cake with Apricot Preserve Glaze

This cake is my mom's favorite

This cake is my mom's favorite. Once I showed up to visit without anything from the bakery and she said, "Where's the cake?" Now it's a standard part of my luggage for any trip home. I call it "LCD" for lowest common denominator. It's the one pound cake everyone knows and loves.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Cake Love"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Warren Brown.
Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction,
Pound Cakes,
Butter Cakes,
Foam Cakes,
Frostings and Glazes,
Fillings,
Meringues,
Cake Assembly,
Conversion Charts,
References and Resources,
Acknowledgments,
Index of Search Terms,

Editorial Reviews

Brown takes the intimidation factor out of baking with easy-to-follow recipes while entertaining with his upbeat and casual writing style. The former lawyer and bakery owner, fulfills the promise to take readers on a "tour of how and why I bake cakes," weaving his personal journey that led to sugar and flour as the tools of his career. Chapters include those featuring types of cake (pound, butter, foam), as well as sections on frostings and glazes, fillings, meringues and cake assembly. The fun and informal recipes, such as Sassy, and Mr. Banana Legs, consist of clear, numbered steps and are accompanied by informative headnotes. Full-color photos illustrate step-by-step techniques and showcase the cakes that are chockfull of appeal with their less-than-perfect appearance and convey the author's philosophy that baking shouldn't be an uptight endeavor; as long as a cake is homemade, it deserves respect. (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Where's the love? It's in Washington, DC, where lawyer-turned-baker Brown provides novice bakers with an excellent introduction to cakes (pound, butter, and foam), as well as frostings and fillings. (LJ 4/15/08)

Library Journal