All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [7]
If you’re going crazy just standing there, waiting while you cream each egg with the butter, you have my permission to multitask. This is why I prefer a stand mixer: it frees up my hands for other things. Set a timer for 1 minute after each egg addition and while you’re carefully creaming, you can measure out and sift together your dry ingredients.
Six
“Sift Together Flour, Baking Soda, And Salt In a Separate Bowl.”
And about that sifting: Modern flour milling methods give us lump-free, fluffy flour, so traditional sifting (using a nifty hand sifter, THEN measuring out from what you’ve sifted) is not usually necessary. Life has gotten easier for us in this twenty-first century, hasn’t it?
I take a hand whisk and whisk my flour, be it in the container or the bag, as precautionary fluffing: This is because flour settles and sometimes it can get lumpy. Next, I measure the flour into a separate bowl the I way Imeasure sugar: dip, scoop, and level. I then measure out my other dry ingredients into that bowl and whisk together. No big whoop. And it’s fun in a “Look at me! I’m not using a sifter! I’m CHEATING!” kind of way.
Seven
“Alternately Add Flour Mixture and Sour Cream.”
You’ve got about 3 cups of the flour mixture and 1 cup of sour cream to work with, and you want to gradually add these to the creamed mixture, so everything gets nice and evenly mixed together. So …
Shift the mixer to the lowest speed. Add about 1 cup of the flour mixture and mix to incorporate. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl with a spatula. Add ½ cup of sour cream. Switch to medium speed and mix until incorporated. Stop the mixer. Repeat, ending with a final addition of about 1 cup of the flour mixture.
Again, you’re taking your time with this step because you want nice, even distribution. You’re also beating air into that batter, which will ultimately help the cake stand nice and tall.
Eight
“Add Extracts. Beat Until Flavorings Are Incorporated and Mixture Looks Smooth and Even.”
In this case the flavorings are vanilla, lemon, and orange extracts. I add one extract, give the mixer a brief spin, then add another, spin, add the last, and give it one last spin. And then I let the mixer run on medium-high speed for another 2 minutes.
That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?
Here’s another direction you’re going to see a lot in baking:
Nine
“Pour Batter Into Prepared Pan.”
Start pouring the batter, GO EASY, and then, while tipping your mixing bowl over the cake pan, use your spatula like a border collie and herd the batter that’s coating the sides and bottom of the bowl into the main pour stream. Pour the batter against only one side of your pan and let it lava its way to the other side. You don’t want any big air pockets getting in there. Air pockets range from pea size to plum size. They can disrupt the baking process and leave craters in your finished cake. (Air bubbles, which help the cake rise, are much smaller—from microscopic to the size of an eraser.)
Do not—DO NOT—fill your tube pan to the rim. NO NO NO NO. Remember, this cake is going to get all patriotic and stand up tall, what with all the air bubbles we’ve beaten into it during our prolonged mixing process. Fill the pan no higher than 1 ½ inches below the rim. Using your spatula, even out the batter in the pan. If you suspect air pockets, just tap the sides of the pan a couple of times and wait for a belch from the deep.
Ten
“Bake 90 Minutes.”
(If you make a test cake with leftover batter, it will need to come out of the oven 30 minutes earlier than the big cake. Put the test cake on a lower rack toward the side of the oven. Centering does not apply to test cakes when you