Real Baking with Rose Levy Beranbaum

why i believe in real baking, i.e. baking from scratch as opposed to a mix

i suspect that the two main reasons people bake from a mix is 1) that they think it’s faster and easier and 2) it’s practically foolproof. there may even be some who grew up with the flavor of a mix and actually prefer it.

i grew up without a cake baking tradition, in fact, my grandmother used the oven only to store pots and pans. there was NEVER anything baked in that oven until I went to the university of vermont, took a course in basic food, and came home thanksgiving vacation with the intention of making my father’s favorite—a cherry pie. it was a disaster of melting bubbling soap that I hadn’t realized was stored in the broiler beneath. in short, i learned scratch cake baking on my own—from scratch.

it’s o.k. to prefer cake mixes if you really do prefer them. my take on the mixes is that since they contain emulsifiers which give them what is known in the industry as tolerance, i.e., the ability to keep their texture despite additions of various extra ingredients, these emulsifiers result in an unpleasantly metallic after-taste. to my palate, the flavor of a cake baked from scratch is incomparably superior. and making a cake from scratch takes maybe 10 minutes more prep time than one from a mix. but as far as the foolproof aspect, let me tell you how to achieve that in a scratch cake.

there are only two important things to know:

1) use cake flour or bleached all-purpose flour. if you use a scale, the weight is the same. if you are using cup measures, and you have all-purpose bleached flour, for every cup of cake flour use 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of all-purpose. if you want the cake to be as tender as one with cake flour, use 3/4 cup of all-purpose and 2 tablespoons of cornstarch. the all-purpose flour i use is gold medal, but if you happen to have a southern or regional brand the protein content may be as low as cake flour so you will not want to add the cornstarch as it may weaken the cake’s structure and cause it to collapse.

the reason that it is essential to use bleached flour is that unbleached has particles that are smooth and round and the butter slips right through them and lands in a gummy layer at the bottom, causing the cake to fall in the center while cooling. the bleaching process, however, roughens these flour particles enabling them to hold the butter in even suspension.

if you measure the flour instead of weighing it, use a measuring cup with unbroken rim. place it on a counter and use a sifter or strainer to fill it with flour, allowing it to mound over the top. use a long metal spatula or knife to run it over the rim, thus removing any excess flour. never lift the cup or shake it during measuring as this packs more flour into the cup which would result in a denser drier cake.

that’s all you need to know about flour for cakes and it’s really quite simple.

2) have the butter softened but cool, i.e. it feels cool to the touch but when you press it with your finger it will flatten. this is a wide range of temperature, between 65 and 75 degrees. most kitchens are warmer than 75 degrees so to be on the safe side you can let the butter soften in a cooler room. if the butter is too cold or too warm the cake’s texture (crumb) will not be even.

here is my favorite of all my yellow cake recipes. it’s the right amount for a standard 9 inch by 2 1/2 inch springform pan but if you have only a 9 x 2 inch pan, just be sure to fill it only half full and bake the remaining batter as 2 cup cakes. (15 to 20 minutes)

if you still prefer your favorite mix, you have my full permission to use it, but not if the only reason is that you don’t trust a "real" cake!

Send to a Friend Print Post/Read Comments (53)

Share: Digg de.licio.us Facebook StumbleUpon

JENNIFER MACDONALD AND THE WINNING CAKE

I’ve always thought that september should be the beginning of the year instead of january. january is the quietist month after all the holiday hubbub, but in september new york wakes up from summer hibernation and is at its most event-full!

the top two baking related events for me this september were the beginning of an extensive celebration of ben franklin’s 300th birthday in philly and the d.c. launch of my dear friend and colleague lisa yockelson's long awaited, exquisitely written, and magnificently published cookbook: “ChocolateChocolate." it seemed perfectly appropriate that lisa’s event came on the heels of the ben franklin one as ben franklin is the muse of writers of all books. after all, where would be without his invention--the printing press!

the benjamin franklin event was held in the franklin institute science museum where many of the city’s top bakers prepared desserts that will be featured on their menus during the year long celebration, with themes designed to honor him. only five of them, however, actually entered the official birthday cake contest. the winner was assistant pastry chef jennifer macdonald from the fountain restaurant at the four seasons hotel philadelphia who prepared a cake modeled after benjamin franklin’s desk with realistically tinted wood-grained rolled fondant as the wood and feather pen, and green blown sugar apples so perfectly executed that two of the judges (dorie greenspan and i) thought they were real apples. the third judge, roland mesnier, former white house pastry chef, wasn’t fooled for an instant as he himself is master of the rare art of blown sugar.

the following week was a longer car trip to d.c. for lisa yockelson's book launch. as a fellow baker, cookbook writer, and kindred spirit, lisa and I are in lively competition over who can do the most helpful and lovely things for the other! while many cookbook authors, especially those in the same field, are possessive of their editors, lisa , in an act of extreme generosity introduced me to her beloved editor—pam chirls of wiley. lisa knew of my dream to do a beautiful four color comprehensive cake book published with the quality of her chocolate book (few publisher do this kind of book), and she also suspected that we would work wonderfully together.

to surprise her, and support her new book, I joined pam chirls for a weekend of celebration, beginning friday night with a quiet late dinner in a neighborhood restaurant near georgetown where we had a gab-fest of bake and book-talk, and culminating with a grand party thrown by her friend and designer, Frank Babb Randolph, in his beautiful townhouse. saturday night’s celebration dinner was at the mini bar of jose andres’s café atlantico where we were presented with a seemingly endless array of mini courses each more stunning to the senses than the next.

another highlight of the weekend was a saturday afternoon book signing at the french linen store yves delorme in bethesda, md. as lisa has incorporated many of their exquisite linens into the photographs of her new book. recipes from the book were prepared for the guests but hidden behind the back of the store was a special stash of brownies lisa herself had prepared for her special friends visiting from out of town. these brownies will explain better than words why she is called “diva of deep dark and fudgy."

here's the recipe for bittersweet chocolate brownies.

Send to a Friend Print Post/Read Comments (7)

Share: Digg de.licio.us Facebook StumbleUpon

i can’t imagine life without a counter-top scale to weigh ingredients!. if i wrote books or recipes just for myself i wouldn’t even include cup measurements. while I’m going out on a limb i might as well admit that given my druthers i would use only the metric system. it’s so much easier, faster, and more reliable. can you imagine how crazy-making it is to create and proof all those charts in my books that list each ingredient in volume, ounces and grams! but i’ve got to cater to those resistant to weighing because as far as i’m concerned, it’s better to bake by volume than not to bake at all. and baking makes me happy so i want to share it with everyone.

bakers are born, not made. we are exacting people who delight in submitting ourselves to rules and formulas if it means achieving repeatable perfection. the rewards of this discipline go beyond providing absolute sensory pleasure. there is also a feeling of magic and alchemy that comes from starting with ingredients that don’t remotely resemble the delicious magnificence of the final result.

i’ve been championing the use of scales for baking for years but now i have a new and persuasive argument that just might tip the balance! two of the most important ingredients used in baking have changed in their packaging over the past few years, impairing accuracy of baking results. at first i thought it was a fluke but when i mentioned it to other bakers and chefs they also were puzzled and aware of it.

i’ve been finding more and more often that when i unwrap a stick of butter and weigh it, instead of getting the 4 ounces listed on the label, it weighs only around 3.87 ounces. I just don’t get it. there used to be laws and fines that encouraged manufacturers to go a little over the mark rather than risk going under (in more ways than one)!

the unnatural change in egg yolks, however, presents a real mystery of nature. i first noticed something weird when i was baking at a friend’s house in the french countryside. i was making a lemon custard tart and instead of the 6 yolks i would normally use i had to use about 10 to equal the same weight. each “large‿ egg in the shell weighed the standard 2 ounces or 56 grams but the yolk inside was tiny. happily most french households have kitchen scales so it was no problem. several years later i noticed the same thing happening in the u.s.! now as you know, the yolk is the living embryonic organism and the white is it’s food. could this new imbalance be a metaphor for the trend toward excessive food starting even this early in the development of life? I remember thinking at the time “poor little yolk—what happened to you?‿ and then yolk after yolk appeared in the same sad size.

another curious thing i’ve learned about eggs is that the law dictates that a dozen large eggs weigh in at a total of 24 ounces, but there can be significant variance in the weight of each individual egg as long as the total adds up.

before you start thinking that the problem is me, i should add that my three scales (are very high caliber laboratory scales that i calibrate on a regular basis.

recipes may not suffer greatly if the variations are minor but they won’t be perfect either. of course not everyone’s goal is to be a perfe