All-New Cake Mix Doctor - Anne Byrn [17]
Love Those Layers
Alayer cake is, to me,the cake to bake. It is to cake what fireworks are to the Fourth of July and what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. It is the cake of our birthdays, our weddings, and our anniversaries. It is the cake of tradition, nostalgia, sweet celebration, and easy elegance. A layer cake looks grand and important. People will think you spent hours in the kitchen baking the cake for them. But you won’t have, although many cooks still shy away from layer cakes and turn to the seemingly simpler Bundts and sheet cakes. However, with a little practice, and the right recipe, assembling a layer cake becomes effortless, enjoyable, and infinitely rewarding.
Okay, I’ll admit I’m so much the cake geek now that I enjoy baking a cake multiple times just to figure out its strengths and flaws. I want to bake it in the sultry humidity of a Nashville summer and then again in a cool January kitchen. But, when I was a teenager I trembled at the thought of a layer cake, and my early cakes were often lopsided and poorly frosted, whereas my mother’s cakes were smooth and flawless. Layer cakes don’t frighten me anymore, and I am happy to share with you some things I have learned about baking layers, as well as provide you with more than three dozen terrific new recipes for these cakes.
You’ll find many tips and tricks and suggestions for baking great layers in this chapter. I’ll guide you through the baking process, provide you with new fillings and fun frostings to go with my new layers, and show you how I easily assemble the classic layer cake. As always these cakes are great for toting. Buy a plastic cake saver and write your name on the bottom of it. These are perfect for taking cakes to the office, to a party, to school, to the countless occasions when you want to share layer cakes with others.
And what of the recipes in this chapter? You’ll recognize a few favorites from my earlier books—I like to call them classics. And yet even a good thing can take a bit of improvement. So for the banana cake with caramel frosting you will see I have omitted adding sugar to the cake, as well as the banana liqueur. The strawberry cake is a departure in that I no longer call for strawberry-flavored gelatin, instead relying on the flavor of fresh strawberries. And in the chocolate and raspberry cake I now strain the raspberries to remove the seeds and I add miniature chocolate chips. These changes are for the better, in my opinion, so give them a try!
I also share new takes on my favorite combinations, such as an outstanding Fresh Orange Birthday Cake, Classic Yellow Cake with Chocolate Fudge Marshmallow Frosting, Easy Coconut Refrigerator Cake, Kentucky Blackberry Jam Cake, The Best Red Velvet Cake with a cream cheese frosting, Chocolate Chip Layer Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting, Sour Cream Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Pan Frosting, and the lovely Lemonade Chiffon Layer Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting.
New to my recipe box are a Williamsburg Orange Cake, Blueberry Muffin Crumble Cake with a crumbly topping, Hawaiian Wedding Cake, Cinnamon Streusel Layer Cake, Elegant Almond Amaretto Cake, Tiramisu Cake, Triple Decker Chocolate Icebox Cake with Shaved Chocolate Frosting, and many more.
Selecting favorite recipes to mention always seems so subjective to me. Surely as I name a recipe I love the best you will prefer another. That’s the wonderful part about taste and opinion. We can differ but also agree that baking cakes—especially layers—is our chance to bring tradition and nostalgia, and celebration and a bit of elegance, back to our kitchens. It’s a welcome trend that should never go out of style.
A BETTER BANANA CAKE WITH CARAMEL FROSTING
OUR FAMILY HAS BEEN CRAZY ABOUT THIS CAKE ever since I first baked it ten years ago. A Nashville reader sent me the recipe, and it was one of the recipes I shared in the original Cake Mix Doctor story in the local paper, The Tennessean. This recipe went on book tour with me, appeared on QVC and Good Morning America,