All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [58]
Second, frosting the cake: This in itself is not horribly time consuming, either. But I have noticed that frosted cake recipes NEVER give you the right amount of frosting, so inevitably I end up making frosting TWICE. Occasionally, this means I have to make a second trip to the store. When things go well, this takes 15 minutes. When they go not-so-well, this takes 45 minutes.
Third, constructing the cake: This in itself is not horribly time consuming, but it can be a disaster, especially if you didn’t divide your layers right, or maybe you did and you accidentally broke one while transferring it from the rack to the cake plate. Or maybe you don’t have enough frosting to even up the boo-boos. Putting the cake together can take between 20 and 30 minutes.
And don’t forget to tally the time it takes for the cake to cool to room temperature before you begin frosting. When it all adds up, we’re talking 4 hours minimum, 6 hours maximum, and one dour, sour Melissa.
All that being said, it IS important for any home baker worth her (or his) salt to know how to make a proper layer cake. There’s going to be a birthday, not your own, sometime in the future, and you will be asked to create a chocolate layer cake, and you, out of pride, will not be able to turn down the request. I know. This happens to me all the blessed time.
Dour, sour, martyr Melissa.
There is no room in my kitchen for martyrs, so I will suck it up. The good news is I’ll probably inhale some cake and frosting at the same time. Plus, just like any other endeavor, the more you practice, the sharper your skills become. I only tell you the bad stuff because we’re very honest with each other, you and I. I wouldn’t let you stick a fork in an electrical socket; nor would I lead you blissfully unwarned into what can be the most frustrating level of Kingdom Cakedom.
I don’t mean to make fancy-pants cakes sound like the fourth circle of hell. They can actually be quite fun and the payoff for making them is high. And some of them have interesting histories as well.
By the way, if you haven’t figured it out by now, the number of servings you get per cake depends on how you slice it. A typical layer cake will serve between 20 and 32 people. From here on, let’s just keep those numbers in our heads unless a recipe says otherwise, um-kay?
And for those of us who LOVE TOOLS, well, these cakes give us a good excuse to go out and buy MORE TOOLS!
Cake-Making Accessories!
At this point, if you have not bought a handheld mixer and a double boiler, now is the time to do so. Many frostings require you to beat them in a saucepan over simmering water. If you have not bought at least 2 round cake pans of the exact same dimension (9 inches in diameter is the standard), now is the time. If you do not own at least a mini-food processor, now is the time to invest (actually, I’d suggest a larger one, if you’ve got the kitchen space). If you have not bought parchment paper, now is the time. If your spatula has become kind of ratty, get a new one. And while you’re at the store, pick up a candy thermometer, too. If you don’t have a long bread knife, consider getting one. And pick up some toothpicks and a wee plastic ruler; this is for evening up and dividing your cake layers. Better yet, consider investing in a Wilton cake layer cutter: it’s adjustable and fairly easy to use and is generally found in any arts and crafts store that carries cake decorating utensils and equipment.
Making it Pretty
I’m not going to get really detailed about the Many and Wondrous Ways to Pimp Your Cake. That’s for another book, by another author. I’m too impatient; I want to eat my cake, not try out for a VH1 reality show. If you want to pipe glorious designs in icing, feel free to pick up one of those cake decorating kits and find a book to go with it. Like colored icing? Pick up some food dye, too.
Coming up: the Lane Cake (page 193), which had a memorable cameo in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill