Appearance of a Cake

I have been interested in baking and cooking since I was a child. I've always loved making sweets for people but they don't always turn out as expected. In my cook book Cakes by Martha Stewart I wanted to try a new Carrot Tea Cake recipe. In the past, when I have made cakes, the cake would end up sticking to the pan and just fall apart. One of her tips in the book was to, “Butter a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan; dust with flour, tapping out excess” (49). This trick had finally worked, it came out as a perfect loaf. I have tried many times using butter or shortening but never flour. I would definitely recommend this easy method for any cake (unless a recipe says otherwise).

 

Appearance of the food you’re eating is everything, it should look good enough for someone to want to eat it. With cakes, frosting is everything. It can go from a soft afternoon pick-me up cake with frosting to a small non-frosted bread on your breakfast table (49). With the carrot cake I made, I decided to use a cream cheese frosting since I was making it more of a casual birthday cake. Bakers always want to eat their product as soon as it gets out of the oven; but to make it look better you should wait 15 minutes while in the pan. Then dump it out and let it cool the rest of the way (49). Doing this will make the frosting spread easier and it will not rip the cake into pieces.

 

Cake:

½ cup unsalted butter (room temp), a little more for the pan

1 ¼ cup all-purpose flour, more for the pan

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ salt

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon grated nutmeg

½ cup dark brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup pack grated carrots

Frosting:

8 ounces cream cheese

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

What other ways/tricks do you use to get a cake not to stick to the pan?

Stewart, Martha. Cakes. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2013. Print.