All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [8]
Now, “Bake 90 minutes” does not mean “open the door every 15 minutes to make sure the cake hasn’t escaped.” No. This brings me to another instruction I want you to burn into your cerebral cortex: Do not molest the cake while it’s in the oven. Do not open the oven door. Do not even THINK about opening the oven door. Cakes are shy by nature. They get embarrassed very easily and will collapse like fainting Southern belles under your greedy, lusty gaze.
True confession: constantly “checking” the cake was once one of my worst baking habits (in addition to “creaming” entire sticks of cold butter with all the sugar at one time). Every time the oven door opens, it lowers the oven temperature, causes vibrations, and disrupts the rise of the batter. It’s a great way to get a heavy, thick, fallen cake and no happy cake dance for you.
If I’m worried about cake batter overflow, I make sure to line the bottom rack of the oven with aluminum foil before the cake pan goes in. Better yet, I don’t fill my pans too high. But I do not even consider opening the door unless it’s 10 minutes before the timer will go off or I smell smoke. The oven gods have been kind, and I’ve had few fallen cakes since adopting this habit.
Here’s a tip for all you aspiring Martha Stewart perfectionistas: don’t stomp around the kitchen while your cake is baking. Proceed with your cleanup placidly and calmly, like you’re on Prozac or Valium and everything is fine, fine, fine with the stock market. Make your kitchen a no-fly zone if you have kids, pets, or inquiring partners, too.
Let me tell you a story while you’re filling the sink with hot, sudsy water. Papa, my mother’s father, LOVED fallen cakes. Some people do. When he was a boy, during the Depression, his job was to keep the kitchen stove going. That meant adding wood every so often. If a cake was baking, he’d DROP the wood into the fire box extra hard and SLAM the door for good measure, hoping the vibrations would result in a fallen cake. And often he was a lucky boy, indeed. Not sure how his momma felt about it.
How to Tell Your Cake Is Done and How to Get It Out Of the Pan
Beep! Beep! Beep! Your timer just went off. Get a long toothpick, a thin skewer, or a knife and have it at the ready.
Using oven mitts, pull your oven rack about halfway out of the oven, exposing half of your cake, which, as you recall, is centered on the rack. Poke your toothpick, thin skewer, or thin knife into the middle of the cake ring. If it comes out clean, your cake is done. If not, back in the oven with it for 10 minutes (15 if it comes out gooey), then retest. Continue doing this until your toothpick or knife comes out clean.
Why not pull the whole pan out of the oven rather than pull out the rack? Remember what I said about fallen cakes? Yeah. Exactly. If your cake is not quite done, you’re risking a fallen cake by manhandling the pan into much cooler air.
Tip: Here’s something experienced home bakers will tell you, but many cookbooks won’t: as you bake more, you’ll get to know your oven. I bake in a small, apartment-sized gas oven. It’s a slow oven. Often, recipes that say “90 minutes” will take me 10 more minutes. If the windows are open in the house and there’s a breeze blowing, it will take even longer. It’s just the way my oven is, and yes, I dream of replacing it one day. But I’ve learned how to compensate for its slacker ways. My father-in-law has an electric oven and it’s fast. When a recipe says “90 minutes”, I visually check the cake at 75 minutes. Fortunately, he has a glass window, so I don’t have to open the door and startle the cake. My mother’s oven is just right: if a recipe says “90 minutes”, usually the cake is ready at 90 minutes. But my point here is this: Get to know whether you have a slow oven, a fast oven, or a just-right oven and take that knowledge into account, Goldilocks, when a recipe tells you “bake 90 minutes.”
When the cake tests done, remove it from the oven and let it cool in the pan for 15 to 30 minutes. When the cake has pulled away from the