**The Art and Science of Cake Making: A Collection of Tips, Tricks, and Failures**
Making cakes is an art form that requires skill, patience, and practice. In this article, we'll delve into the world of cake making, exploring various techniques, common mistakes, and the importance of experimentation.
**Cake Fails: Lessons Learned from Failure**
In any creative pursuit, failure is an inevitable part of the learning process. Cake making is no exception. Our writer has had their fair share of failures, but each one has taught them a valuable lesson. For instance, when it comes to pineapple upside-down cake, there's no way it takes five hours to make unless you include the time spent driving to the shops and buying ingredients. Instead, we can look at three options: leaving out the cake altogether, lining the tin with baking paper, or covering it with a generous amount of butter and brown sugar. These simple variations can result in vastly different outcomes, teaching us that sometimes less is more, while other times, a little extra effort can go a long way.
**The Hyper-Realistic Cake: A Challenge Worth Taking On**
One of the most impressive types of cakes to make is the hyper-realistic cake. These cakes are designed to trick you into thinking they're not made of sugar and flour at all. They require an insane amount of time, skill, and practice to get right. Our writer notes that even a professional cake artist like Natalie from Sideserf Cake Studio finds it difficult to create these masterpieces. The key is to start somewhere and be patient with yourself as you learn and improve. It's also essential to remember that when using someone else's art, it's the right thing to do to give credit where credit is due.
**The Art of Caramelizing Sugar**
When it comes to creating a caramelized sugar topping for your cake, there's no substitute for the real thing. Our writer notes that using a lot of butter and brown sugar can create an amazing flavor combination, but be warned: this topping layer can make the top of the cake slightly soggy and very sweet. To balance out the flavors, our writer recommends serving the cake hot with a scoop of ice cream. This simple trick can elevate any cake to new heights.
**Cakes for Beginners: Tips and Tricks**
For those just starting out on their baking journey, it's essential to remember that practice makes perfect. Don't be discouraged if your first attempts at making cakes don't turn out as expected – with time and patience, you'll get the hang of it. Our writer recommends experimenting with different ingredients, techniques, and recipes until you find what works best for you.
**The Power of Cremeux**
Our writer has discovered a game-changing ingredient that's taken their cake making to new heights: cremeux. This soft, creamy mixture is made by pouring the cooled cremeux into a silicon mold and then topping it with cake or other ingredients. The result is a beautiful, perfectly textured dessert that's sure to impress even the most discerning palates.
**Cake Making for Beginners**
When it comes to making cakes, there are many options available to suit every skill level and preference. For those just starting out, we recommend starting with simple recipes like vanilla or chocolate cake. As you gain confidence in your baking skills, you can experiment with more complex flavors and ingredients.
**A Word of Encouragement**
To all our readers out there who are passionate about cake making, we want to say thank you for being part of this wonderful community. Your support means the world to us, and we're excited to see what you'll create next. Remember to always be kind to others, whether it's sharing your expertise or learning from someone else's mistakes. With a little patience, practice, and creativity, anything is possible – even the most challenging cake recipes!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWelcome to How To Cook That, I'm Ann Reardon and this is an episode of Cake Rescue where we take cake fails from across the internet and show you how to rescue them. Cassie is struggling with a layered Oreo ice cream cake ... a little bit um crooked, it's okay all the ugliness is gonna be covered up guys it's okay i'm gonna put this back in the freezer just for a sec. This thing melts so quickly so we gotta get going we're going to start by smearing some oh my gosh it's already melting some whipped cream this is really bad...the ice cream is melting instantly 😅Let's rescue it. First thing if you're making ice cream cake turn your freezer down to its lowest setting so it sets the ice cream harder. She had two tubs of ice cream one slightly bigger than the other and instead of cutting the tub into slices we're going to scoop out lots of the vanilla ice cream into a bowl you can use that for something else then flatten a layer at the bottom of the container. Add some Oreos crushed with magic shell or ice magic and flatten that down into a layer in the container and then add chocolate ice cream on top of that now you can see the vanilla ice cream is starting to melt already because it's ice cream but because we have it in a container it's holding all of those drips, it's not going everywhere it's going to keep it the shape we want it to be. Chuck that into the freezer for a few hours and also put a cake tin half filled with water in the freezer and once that's frozen you can turn it upside down on a cloth or a towel and use that as your work surface and because it's cold it's going to give you a lot more time to work before the ice cream melts. These containers are pretty thick so you're going to need to cut through the top with scissors and then use a sharp knife to cut down the rest of the way and peel it off and then put that onto a plate now this plate has also been in the freezer the whole time because otherwise the plate will melt the ice cream. Next Cassie covered the whole thing in whipped cream, I personally would skip this step if you're new to cake decorating because it looks fine without it but if you do want it all white then by all means add whipped cream but it does mean you're going to need to smooth it out to make it look good which is a bit tricky because the cream is freezing and put that back into the freezer for that cream to go hard before you add the icing otherwise the icing is just going to slide off as you saw before. This is just store-bought icing the same as Cassie used.You can see that despite being under the hot filming lights this one is not dripping or melting yet because it's on the ice tin and it had a cold plate to start with whereas this one went straight onto a normal plate and it is already melting and it's very very soft but yummy. Next up we have Hazza making a chocolate cake he has given us the recipe that he used and it looks really watery and after baking it for the time that the recipe said it looked okay but then it sunk in the middle and he wants to know what went wrong well let's bake it and find out. The recipe he used whipped brown sugar and butter together then added eggs and melted chocolate and then followed that by alternating amounts of flour and boiling water. There was really not a lot of point in whipping the air into the butter if you're just going to melt it with the boiling water while you're stirring so i'm not loving this recipe i wouldn't bake this particular one again but anyway dip it into a lined tin and then bake that at 190 degrees for 20 minutes then reduce the heat to 160 and cook it for a further 25 minutes. This has been baked for that full amount of time and if i put a knife into the middle and pull it out you can see it's not baked, it it's nowhere near done. If i put a knife at the edge then you can see it is ready on the sides but the middle is not yet baked i would predict this will need at least another 25 minutes maybe 35 minutes in the oven but let's just leave it out and see what happens. Because it isn't cooked firm it can't hold its shape around the air bubbles that have formed because of the baking powder so that air just escapes out of the middle and it's like letting a cake deflate. Now let's rescue the fail firstly get some white chocolate and break it up and put it into a bowl then add cream and you want to microwave that and then stir it until it's smooth and then just put that to one side to cool. Tip the cake out of the tin and now use a spoon and a knife to take out any of that stodgy middle part you'll notice it's no longer liquid and that's because the cake was hot and it does continue to cook when you've taken it out of the oven so it's kind of cooked in the middle even though it's very very soft but it hasn't got the shape or the texture of a cake that we want so just take all of that out and we'll get rid of those scraps. Then cover the cake in white chocolate ganache to get the ganache this consistency you just have to wait until it's reached to room temperature and then whip it with electric beaters. Now you can put your guests in the comments as to what this rescue is going to be, Dave thinks i'm making a tissue box but that is not what i am doing. Tip some compound chocolate onto some foil you can use real chocolate if you know how to temper it and i have videos explaining how to do that but if you don't know how to temper if you're new to chocolate and cake decorating just use compound chocolate it's a lot easier and spread it out as thin as you can. Once it's starting to set but it's not yet firm run a knife down and cut it into strips then use the tip of a knife to scratch a wood grain pattern along the chocolate just run it all the way along in a wavy line and then make another wavy line right next to that one and it will look a bit more like wood. Once it's set cut that into strips the length of your cake and put it around the top of the cake when you're doing the sides you'll need to put a little bit of extra melted chocolate on the back and then just push them into place. Make some blue jelly and let it cool to room temperature and add a few spoonfuls into the middle. You want to put that in the fridge and let that bit set before you fill it up with the rest of your jelly and that just helps keep the jelly really clear otherwise it can just get a bit cloudy from absorbing stuff out of the ganache. Depending on what character your child is currently obsessed with add an appropriate toy into the pool, then spread some melted chocolate onto the cake board and add some coconut. I've just coloured this coconut green by mixing it in a bowl with a little bit of green food colouring and it will come up like this and if you want to you can add a step and your failed cake is now rescued...Okay photo now...In this next one Isaac successfully baked the cake and it all looks good so far but it is stuck to the tin and now it's completely broken 😑And you just dropped it on the floor, That is disappointing. Prevention is always better than cure so if you're about to bake a cake cut yourself a circle of non-stick baking paper in the size of your tin put some butter or margarine in the corners of the tin and then put the baking paper circle on the base. Now let's bake one cake in the lined greased tin and another one in a tin that i'm doing nothing to no grease no baking paperr nothing at all. Once they are baked and cooled enough that you can touch the tin run a knife around the edge he did that he did that bit right and then gently shake the tin up and down to see if the cake is loose then you can tip it upside down on a cooling rack and it will come out perfectly but what if it's not lined or greased? If we run the knife around the edge just like we did before and then give it a shake and now you can see it's not free it is stuck it's not budging it's stuck on every side so we're in trouble. What you can do from this point is get a knife put it straight down and then push inwards what we're trying to do is loosen it along the base and you'll need to do that all the way around and then give it a shake again see how now that's lifting it's better but i can tell it's still a little bit stuck so let's turn it out flip it over and we've lost the middle of the cake. We did manage to rescue the edge but we've got this big hole in it now the moral of the story is line your cake tins. Now how would i rescue it if i only had half a cake and the rest of it was on the floor i'd make cremeux. This is one of my favorite things to do even if the cake wasn't broken because it tastes and looks so good you can find the recipe for cremeux in my Crazy Sweet Creations cookbook and on the howtocookthat.net website. You just whisk together egg yolks and sugar, heat cream on the stove and then pour some of that hot cream into the yolks to warm them whisk it up and then tip all of that back into the pan. You need to return it to the heat for just a minute and then pour it over your chocolate you can use whatever combination of light dark or white chocolate you like for this. Wait for two minutes and then stir the now melted chocolate into the creamy mixture. I'm making a double batch of this because i want to drop one of these over to a friend who's not been well she's got covid. So i've got more than i need here for one cake. Keep stirring until it looks like this simple. Grab a silicon mold and pour in some of your cremeux. If you don't have a silicone mold you could just use a cake tin or a plastic container for this bang it a few times to get rid of any air bubbles and then add some cake on top. Now I've just cut this cake in half if your cake is in pieces you could just add thin chunks of cake to make a layer over the top of the cremeux. Flatten out the base by adding more cremeux on top spreading it out and then put that in the freezer for several hours or overnight if you've got time once it's frozen pull the edges away from the cake on all sides and then flip it onto a plate and peel off the silicon mold.🍰Beautiful, soft, creamy chocolaty perfection.Next cake fail...There is no way it takes five hours to make a pineapple upside down cake unless you include the time it takes to drive to the shops and buy the ingredients. You do kind of need this one to turn out first try so let's look at three options ... in this tin we're going to put nothing in this tin we're going to put baking paper and in this one we're going to put a lot of butter and i mean a lot of butter and cover that with brown sugar so it creates a caramel type topping. Add the pineapple and the cherries and then put an equal amount of pineapple cake batter on top of each one and sprinkle on any leftover pineapple i'll put the recipe for this on the website. This is the one that had nothing and it turns out okay but if anything does stick or if it falls off you can just add it back in it's not really that hard to rescue it's not that big a deal. This is the one that was lined with baking paper and it of course comes out easily and you can just peel off the paper and this is the one with the extra butter and sugar. Now i think this caramel one looks the best but it does make the top layer of the cake a little bit soggy and very, very sweet so for taste I prefer the one with baking paper served hot with a scoop of ice cream. Next cake fail is this hyper realistic apple cake 🧐 They are giving themselves a rating of one out of ten! Hyper realistic cakes are supposed to trick you they're supposed to look so good that you're not sure if it's the real thing or if it's a cake. They are the hardest of the cakes to make and as messy as this one looks it is a start ... it's like learning to sculpt and paint you won't get it right on your first try but you have to start somewhere, so i'm confident if they keep trying they will get better each time they go. If you want to make a hyper-realistic apple cake watch the video by Natalie from Sideserf Cake Studio, she has a degree in fine art and painting and even she says: this is seriously difficult it's really really hard to do. Getting the shape just right and of course then matching the colours and painting on all those details perfectly is going to take an insane amount of time and then other people just steal your video and use it for cake or fake videos for free without giving any credit to the cake artist ... just saying give credit when you use someone else's art it's the right thing to do. With thanks to my patrons for your amazing support you are seriously incredible make it a great week by being kind to others and i'll see you on Friday ❤️\n"
