Monday, April 12, 2010

Cake: A mystery

Yesterday, I made a birthday cake. The recipe called for a mix of cake flour and all purpose. Since there were grubs in my cake flour, I used all-purpose and added cornstarch (2 Tbsp/cup). I've noticed when I put two pans side by side on the same shelf in my oven, they don't bake evenly, so I put the cakes one on top of the other. Here's the cake that baked on the lower shelf:



It's a pretty cake--even in color if a little pale, nicely domed, perfectly satisfactory in the home-made-cake category.

Now, here's the cake that I placed on the upper shelf:



Weird, right? Can you see how it sunk in the middle and it looks a little pudding like? And the surface of the thing, there are little pin holes along the edges? Why would that happen?

Fortunately, chocolate frosting forgives all.





It wasn't my best cake, but it was my most mysterious.

3 comments:

marjorie said...

that is a purty, purty cake. as for WHY you got two such diff layers, i find all the ways of my oven mysterious, so i got nothin'. it's probably because of SCIENCE.

Robin Aronson said...

the frosting was so shiny, but not that thick - another weird thing....if only i had the patience I could read harold mcgee or some such. But, really, i'd rather just eat cake.

Robin Aronson said...

FYI: I asked Melissa about the cake discrepancy (http://melissaclark.net) and she said, "Oh, sometimes that happens."