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Notes on Cake
Sep. 13th, 2008 12:40 pmThere are two reasons I made cake today: because I like to, and in an attempt to resurrect some of my flagging guest karma. I had hoped to do this for End of Summer last week, but last week, we had a plumbing disaster with overflow into the pantry, and I think that all of my friends appreciate that I chose to simply throw out most of my baking staples and try some other time.
It was a good idea to make the dulce de leche ahead last night. It was a bad idea to put the dulce de leche in the refrigerator. Really, I should have made the cake ahead too. It wasn't that hard, and I was up anyway. It would have been easier to do it than than it was to do it this morning, while wrangling the baby around the kitchen. It worked out okay though, I only had to put him outside the kitchen gate (to howl as outside the gates of Eden) while the stove was open. The final assembly was done while the child was napping. (Incidentally, can any of you observant types tell me if there is a Jewish blessing for a napping child? I will sing it every day if there is.)
The cake needs a lot of help to release from the pans - twice around with a plastic picnic knife did the trick. The chocolate sour cream cake was a tad fragile (I think it would have fallen right through the cooling rack, given time), and I was prepared to exercise similar care with this one, but it turned out to be unnecessary. It may or may not be a coincidence that the layer that sat longest in the pan (by about fifteen minutes) had the cleanest release, and that the removal of the paper liner from that cake also removed all the crust, presenting a beautiful, absorbent surface for rum syrup.
The dulce de leche cream gets stiff, but not peaky. You get little peaks, but not what you'd expect from whipped cream. They don't fall over, they just don't get very high. They are like Appalachians, these peaks. Not Himalayas.
All of my layers have slopes, and I didn't notice this until I had them all stacked up, and one side of the cake had these gaps. I did some rotation, but I don't know that it helped. This is one of many reasons that my cake does not look like the pictures. I am sure that a professional food stylist, a professional food photographer, and advanced photo retouching software could change that, but in the absence of these, I will simply encourage people to taste it with their eyes shut and get back to me afterwards if they still have complaints.
It was a good idea to make the dulce de leche ahead last night. It was a bad idea to put the dulce de leche in the refrigerator. Really, I should have made the cake ahead too. It wasn't that hard, and I was up anyway. It would have been easier to do it than than it was to do it this morning, while wrangling the baby around the kitchen. It worked out okay though, I only had to put him outside the kitchen gate (to howl as outside the gates of Eden) while the stove was open. The final assembly was done while the child was napping. (Incidentally, can any of you observant types tell me if there is a Jewish blessing for a napping child? I will sing it every day if there is.)
The cake needs a lot of help to release from the pans - twice around with a plastic picnic knife did the trick. The chocolate sour cream cake was a tad fragile (I think it would have fallen right through the cooling rack, given time), and I was prepared to exercise similar care with this one, but it turned out to be unnecessary. It may or may not be a coincidence that the layer that sat longest in the pan (by about fifteen minutes) had the cleanest release, and that the removal of the paper liner from that cake also removed all the crust, presenting a beautiful, absorbent surface for rum syrup.
The dulce de leche cream gets stiff, but not peaky. You get little peaks, but not what you'd expect from whipped cream. They don't fall over, they just don't get very high. They are like Appalachians, these peaks. Not Himalayas.
All of my layers have slopes, and I didn't notice this until I had them all stacked up, and one side of the cake had these gaps. I did some rotation, but I don't know that it helped. This is one of many reasons that my cake does not look like the pictures. I am sure that a professional food stylist, a professional food photographer, and advanced photo retouching software could change that, but in the absence of these, I will simply encourage people to taste it with their eyes shut and get back to me afterwards if they still have complaints.
