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By Root 1006 0

are doing a lot of home baking. If you’ve got to store or transport a cake, you cannot beat a plastic plate with a snap-on lid for doing the job well. These are sold in all sorts of designs at all price points. My advice is to invest in a good one with a handle and to write your name on the bottom of it. Buy several other less expensive versions if you bake and tote a lot of cake. Just make sure the lid fits snugly before you pick up the cake. The beauty of a cake saver is not only in the ease of transport but in that once you arrive at your destination you can open the lid and the cake can be beautifully presented on the plastic base. If the gathering is a little dressy, I’ll tape a paper doily to the base, then place the cake on top. You can store refrigerator cakes in these plastic containers, and you can freeze cakes in them, too, should your freezer be large enough.

In a pinch you can still cover a cake if you don’t have a cake saver. Use a large soup pot, placing it upside-down over the cake on a plate. Glass cake domes are nice because they will fit over any size plate or cake stand. And a cake on a plate under the dome looks pretty on the kitchen counter.

Let’s Bake!

The recipes in this book were tested in Thermador and General Electric ovens. Most of the recipes were baked at 350°F, but a good number were baked at 325°F. I have come to like the lower temperature when baking some brownies and chocolate cakes. For me arriving at the lower temperature was a result of trial and error. How do you know what is the best temperature for baking in your oven and for your cake?

As ovens age they have a tendency to bake hotter. You may be sensing this to be the case if the cookies you baked at 350°F for as long as you can remember are now burning before their baking time is supposed to be up. One appliance repairman actually told me the best way to determine if your oven is baking hot is to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies and to bake them at 350°F. If they are burned in ten minutes time, they are baking higher than 350°F, more like 375° to 400°F. Repairmen have fancy thermometers that can test the true temperature of your oven and the time it takes to preheat. If you’ve just moved into a new house, or if your oven seems to be baking funny, paying for this one-time service is well worth it. A less expensive method is to place an oven thermometer in the back of the oven and then set the oven to 350°F. If the thermometer doesn’t register this temperature within 10 to 15 minutes, your oven thermostat might be incorrect. Learning to live with an oven that is not calibrated perfectly has become a way of life for many. I remember an oven I once had in an apartment in Atlanta. It was more like a blazing pizza oven! I’d just lower the temperature no matter what the recipe so the food wouldn’t incinerate.

10 Secrets for Sensational Cakes

I know it’s tempting to just race through all this introductory advice and get to the recipes. But honestly, your cakes, whether they’re from a box or from scratch, will turn out more successfully if you follow these tips.

1. Read through the recipe before you bake. Errors occur because you skip an ingredient, measure incorrectly, don’t have the right size pan, or set the oven at the wrong temperature. Pan sizes are often marked on the bottom.

2. Place the oven rack in the center for good heat distribution and even browning.

3. Preheat your oven for ten to fifteen minutes before baking.

4. Check your oven temperature routinely with an oven thermometer. Call an appliance repairman to have the temperature tested if you feel the oven runs hot or cold. Cakes that are not done by the maximum time might be baking at too low a temperature, and cakes that brown too quickly or are done too quickly might be baking in too hot an oven.

5. Measure correctly. Measure dry ingredients, such as sugar, cocoa, flour, and so on, in measuring cups for dry ingredients. Spoon soft ingredients like flour and confectioners’ sugar into measuring cups, then sweep the top level with