Baking the Best Cakes and Sweets With a Cake Mixer

Homemade treats are always wonderful. Mixing cake mixes by hand not only is labor intensive but it is not the best way to get a good batter. It is impossible to mix a cake by hand and get it aerated enough. It may be hard to notice that the batter is not as fluffy as it needs to be to get you a great light fluffy cake, but once you compare the taste to a cake made using a cake mixer you will be able to tell the difference.

A cake mixer combines the ingredients in the cake batter in record time and aerates it exactly as it needs to be aerated resulting in the perfect fluffy batter. This makes for a better tasting cake.

Time and Labor

Trying to mix a cake by hand is really not only time consuming but it is labor intensive. Keeping up with the right number of strokes is a study in frustration. Most cake recipes call for using a cake mixer for the ease of use and to guarantee the ingredients are blended as they need to be.

Continue reading “Baking the Best Cakes and Sweets With a Cake Mixer”

Buttercream Cake Design Tips

Creating beautiful and mouth-watering cakes is not as scary as it might seem. A variety of resources are available to guide you through your cake creating experience-books, websites, online videos and classes are just a few ways that you can learn how to decorate cakes.
This guide covers the basics of making and decorating tasty and beautiful cakes with buttercream icing and details. We explain the basics of icing, tools needed for decorating, how to design your cake, and how to transport and assemble the cake. In addition to buttercream, we touch briefly on fondant and royal icing, which can be used to make accent details for the cake; however, you can make a beautiful and edible creation using only buttercream. Get ready to decorate!

Icing 101

There are hundreds of different icing recipes and options for cake decorating. As an amateur or a pro just looking for inspiration, fundamentals are always at the core of any success project.

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The Best Italian Custard Cake

Learn how to master the art of making a scrumptious Italian custatd cake. Also known as a ‘continental cake’ it is a very traditional cake used by many Italian families. Not only is it one of the most delicious cakes you will ever taste it is so simple, versatile and cheap to make. Simply follow the recipe below and remember that the key of baking is accuracy and precision. The end result will be perfection.

Cake:

Ingredients:

5 eggs, room temperature

250g castor sugar

2 1/2 tsps vanilla sugar

100g cornflour

100g plain flour

1 1/4tsps baking powder

75mls cold water

Method:

1) Grease a 24cm springform tin and line with grease proof baking paper. Preheat oven to 190 degrees celcius. Continue reading “The Best Italian Custard Cake”

How to Make Mini Cake Towel Slices

Towel cake slices are an easy DIY favor for weddings and bridal showers. They are a unique way to add flare to your event. They can be made in any color you like to match your wedding theme which allows them to stand out when placed next to a plate in a seated dinner, or stacked on a gift table.

Things You’ll Need:

Cardboard
Scissors
Small towel
Safety pins
Ribbon
Gift boxes or bags
Toppers and fillers (candles, soap, candy, etc.)
Optional:
Hot glue
Fabric glue

Step 1

Create a template. With a ruler and pencil, draw onto the cardboard a triangle with a 6 inch base and two 3 ½ inch sides that will form the top of the cake slice. At both sides and the base, draw two-inch thick rectangles that will fold down to serve as the sides of the slice. Continue reading “How to Make Mini Cake Towel Slices”

How To Make Chocolate Truffles Out Of Leftover Cake

Fancy having home made truffles that are freshly made? You can make them yourself. Easily.

There are many ways to make your own chocolate truffles.

For example, if you have left over cake, you can turn that old cake into chocolate truffles.

This is a fun activity for the kids, to keep them out of mischief. Make sure they wash their hands thoroughly before they start.

You will need.

Leftover cake.
A large bar of your favourite chocolate.
Chopped nuts.

Kids Kitchen Activities – Making Chocolate Truffles Continue reading “How To Make Chocolate Truffles Out Of Leftover Cake”

There’s Never Too Much Chocolate Cake

There can be no greater way to spend an evening or weekend afternoon than baking and decorating a cake. The repetition creates an almost hypnotic state, whilst the promise of a tasty treat later engages the brain’s pleasure system.

For most chefs, the baking part is simple enough, as there are hundreds of recipes for all varieties of cake to be found online and in cook-books, and it’s usually the decorating part that stumps people. Most fruit based cakes can be topped with a simple layer of brown sugar to give that crisp baked look, so it’s down to the chocolate based cakes to be decorated with love and care. This article aims to give some tips for chocolate cake decoration.

Firstly, take into consideration what kind of chocolate your cake is made from. Chocolate comes in three main varieties – milk, dark and plain. It’s a generally accepted rule not to mix types on a cake, as the contrast in texture and flavors can ruin the overall taste of the cake. Milk chocolate tends to be very sweet and smooth, dark chocolate is much bitterer and coarser, whilst plain usually falls somewhere in the middle, being rich in flavor and fairly smooth. Whichever type you’ve used in the cake batter, you will need extra to make the icing.

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Birthday Cookie and Cake Recipe

When I asked soon-to-be 12 year old Ryann what kind of birthday cake she wanted she said, “Either a cookie cake or a chocolate cake”. After deliberating which to make, I settled on both! I topped a chocolate-chip cookie cake with a rich chocolate cake, topped it all with chocolate butter cream frosting and, of course, birthday candles!

Unlike my friend Marianne Getz (Wolfgang Puck’s pastry chef), I am NOT a good baker. However, I believe that Birthday Cakes should be made at home, with love, rather than store bought so…I made it myself…using mixes! Plus, rather than wasting $3.99 on the pre-made decorative colored frosting, I spent $.99 on white frosting and improvised. Unless you are really getting fancy, you can do it my way by using the vanilla frosting, food coloring, convection sugar…and a baggie!

Here’s what to buy:

1 Krusteaz Chocolate Chunk cookie mix
1 Betty Crocker Devils Food Cake Mix
2 large tubs Betty Crocker Rich and Chocolate Buttercream-Style Icing
1 regular tub Betty Crocker Rich and Creamy Vanilla Frosting
All ingredients to make the cookie and the cake mix; eggs, oil, etc.
1/4 Cup confectioners sugar
food coloring for decorative writing and edging.

Directions: Continue reading “Birthday Cookie and Cake Recipe”

A Guide to Choosing The Perfect Wedding Cake

Aside from the dress, the cake is probably the most admired element of the wedding. There’s a reason why it’s placed at the center of the reception hall, so everybody who enters can admire it. The perfect wedding cake should not only reflect the personalities of the bride and groom, but also blend into the theme of the wedding seamlessly.

Decide on a design for the cake much before the actual date of the wedding. As D-day draws nearer, you might find yourself tied down with a million things to do, and not have time to look into the details of the cake.

The first thing you’ll look into is the design of the cake. Gone are the days of a single three tiered cake as the only choice for a wedding. Nowadays, cakes come studded with crystals, have roses falling all over the sides, can resemble Christmas trees, and a myriad other possibilities.

Choose a design that stands out from the rest, and blends with your personality. An elegant couple will probably do well to choose an equally elegant and traditional white three tiered vanilla cake. A whimsical eclectic couple on the other hand, will have more room for innovation. A cupcake wedding confection that consists of a number of cupcakes of different flavors all arranged to make one large tiered cake is another off beat idea that allows guests to sample different flavors of cake at a single wedding.

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The Most Common Faults in Cake Baking and Their Causes

Cake baking is one of the most enjoyable procedures to follow; there are many steps that one has to take in order to get that sweet, lovely and perfect cake. Although some cakes come out lovely and perfectly cooked others tend to be faulty. Having a faulty cake is not one of the best moments of the person making it but they always want to know what happened. Therefore let us get to know some of the common faults that occur and their causes.

Faults and Causes During Cake Making

Cake rising to a peak and cracked

This happens when the heat in the oven is too hot, or when the cake is placed to high in the oven.

Open and coarse texture

This happens because of four reasons: too much baking powder, wrong portion of fat to sugar or the flour to the liquid, insufficient creaming or the heat in the oven was too much.

Dry and crumbled texture Continue reading “The Most Common Faults in Cake Baking and Their Causes”

Cake Baking Made Effortless With the Baking Equipment

Essential baking appliances make your baking experience at home wonderful and easy. Baking is indeed fun as this activity tends to bind the family. To become a professional baker it’s important for you to recognize and know the various type of tools and equipments used in the process and more importantly how to use and when to best save your time and money. One can find a variety of these equipments in the market and online stores. The basic need to use these utensils and equipments is to get proper guidance on how to cook and properly blend the wide-ranging recipes for preparing the delicious deserts, cake, pastries or tempting cookies.

Receiving a compliment on a well made and cake by your friends or customers, becomes a key factor that motivates you to master the skill of baking. For a perfect baking skill and familiarity to the tools and equipments is necessary. These equipments are depending on each of their functions which are further divided into various types. With all ingredients ready as per the recipe, the first equipment required is a mixing tool for properly mixing the dough or other ingredients fro making a cakes or other desert. For mixing purpose one can use the traditional mixing bowls or an electric mixer. A mixer is used for beating, whipping, mixing food ingredients. Continue reading “Cake Baking Made Effortless With the Baking Equipment”