Homemade Cake

The Pioneer Woman has wonderful, yummy recipes. I just made the Strawberry Shortcake Cake and it was excellent.

Moist yellow cake (EXCELLENT recipe is by a woman who owns a bakery)

1 cup unsalted butter, softened (room temp – you can soften 1 min in microwave at power 2) *** use land o’lakes or HIGH quality butter (cheep butter has more water content)
3 cups cake flour, sifted (make your own cake flour. ONE cup cake flour = 1 cup flour + 1/3 cup corn starch)
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
1 cup buttermilk

1. preheat the oven to 325. butter an 8 inch cake pan, line with parchment paper, and butter and flour parchment. In a bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy for 5 minutes (this breaks down sugar crystals so cake does not taste grainy). Add vanilla, then eggs – ONE AT A TIME.

2. in a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add to egg mixture in 3 additions always ending with flour (e.g. flour, buttermilk, flour, buttermilk, flour).

3. pour batter into pan and bake until top is golden 45-50 minutes.

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THE best frosting recipe:
Simple Buttercream Icing:
8 cups of powered sugar
2 cups room temperature Butter
½ cup milk room temp (not skim milk)- or use heavy cream

Mix butter and sugar until sugar “comes together”/is smooth. Add milk and beat low speed 2 minutes. Use high quality butter (e.g. Land O’Lakes is the best on the open market). Lower grade butters have higher water content. Wrap a towel around mixer to keep sugar from flying.

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For a filling you can try:
Rich Chocolate Frosting

Original Recipe Yield 32 servings

Ingredients
• 2 cups butter (no substitutes), softened
• 9 cups confectioners' sugar
• 2 1/2 cups baking cocoa
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup milk
Directions
1. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter. Gradually beat in confectioners' sugar, cocoa and vanilla. Add enough milk until frosting reaches spreading consistency.

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GOOD LUCK!!

If you're feeling perky... I'd actually recommend making some cakes in advance. Cupcakes work, in order to just taste them... or whole small cakes in order to practice frosting.

<grinning> And this is where my interests come in. I leave the baking to a friend of mine whenever I can get away with it, and then I decorate.

For wedding cake perfection you've got 3 options:

- Fondant (easier than you think)
- Tools and a REAL steady hand (specialty tools... a knife won't work)
- The inch thick "swirl" (this are the curly q frosted cakes)

I'll stick with the 3rd option, since it's the easiest.

To decorate:

- Let cake cool, or more preferably... freeze it. (this keeps it from disintegrating or crumbling while you frost it)

- Make sure the icing is room temp to wrist warm (cool or cold icing is death... aka 'destroyer of cakes'... because it, even on a cold cake, will tear crumbs & chunks out of it).

(After the cake has been filled and stacked*)

- Spread the icing over the cake. That easy. Get about 1/2 inch on there... aka all the cake is covered.

- Ice it again.

- Yup. Seriously.

- This time, make it ooey gooey thick. Use a spoon or knife to be decorative... making the curly q's and swirls.

Tricks:

* Bubble tea straws inserted into the layers and then snipped off with scissors keep cakes stable. They're waaaaay wider than regular straws, and so much more practical than dowels. 2 at a minimum. 4 at a max (unless you're doing a giant cake, like sheet size). For 3 layer 9" rounds/squares... I use 3. When I'm cutting the cake to serve I just pull them out as I get to them. Do this after baking, filling, & stacking... but before frosting. I keep a pair of tweezers in my pocket to just grab the edge and pull them out. But fingers work.

- Ice it on a piece of cardboard. Cake shops have these all nice and round and pretty, as well as thick and rectangular (aka to to carry). The round ones just barely peek out, so you don't have to worry about cleaning them... but you'll need some kind of tray. The rectangular ones are foil covered... so they wipe clean for the inevitable drips, whoops, and darns... and work as a tray.

- Use a big old kitchen or bread knife to cut off the rounded "domes" that form on the top of cakes. Before or after freezing. Before and you have to be gentle. After and you have to be careful not to cut yourself. If you double the recipe, you'll have more than enough for 3-4 layers after the tops come off. I try not to nibble the "waste". I'm not usually successful. Especially as I cut them off warm, and very little is better than warm cake.

- Parchment paper the bottom & sides of the cake pans. It's easier to peel them off after baking than it is to "fix" a hole because the durn cake stuck to the side or bottom of the pan.

- If you go the box route (and I do when I can't get my friend to make them for me)... use CORN oil. It makes the flavor richer and it keeps cakes moist for over a week. Seriously. Corn oil is AMAZING. I buy one box per 9" layer. I end up with a little left over batter, but not a lot. I go for 1"+ sized layers. Also, if you go the box route... leave the batter a little "bumpy". Smooth batter = crappy / chewy cakes and pancakes. Lumpy batter = airy and springy cakes and pancakes. Lumps should be eraser sized and smaller.

- Everyone messes up. EVERYONE. On every cake. So don't sweat it, and have fun! Most things can be fixed with frosting. :)

Fancy Schmancy:
- Cake shops also have edible "fairy dust". If you're doing white icing you can use white, silver, or gold to great effect. They all make cakes sparkly. White would add sparkles and depth but be really subtle. I tend to like subtle.
- Cake shops also have : edible candied flowers, candy pearls for outlining the bottom ring (DON'T do the top, if you're doing buttercream or royal icing... they fall off)

I'm kind of a cookbook junkie. I have to cookbook recommendations (you should call your local library, 'cause they might have them and then you could flip through and see if you're interested)

The first is the Cake Doctor cookbook, which someone else recommended. So many of the recipes are wonderful and so super easy it's ridiculous.

However, if you really want to do from scratch, get Cake Love by Warren Brown. In the first chapter he talks you through step by step everything you do and why and what it should look like at different stages. It's extremely detailed, but not hard once you get the hang of it. I'm a pretty good cook/baker and I learned so much. I can recommend this book enough. And that's purely from the knowledge standpoint. When it comes to the actual cakes ... oh my god. Seriously. Oh. My. God.

The only problem is, eating the homemade cakes from this book will pretty much ruin all over cakes for you. I never order cake for desert at restaurants anymore, 'cause what's the point?

I do still use the Cake Doctor sometimes for fast cakes, but the Cake Love cakes are so amazing, I dream of reasons to bake. When I die, I want my coffin made of Cake Love cake.

(The only caveat I have is that there's a typo in the Lemon-Ginger Pound Cake recipe -- should be 12 oz of flour instead of 2 ... the first time I made that cake, it didn't turn out, but the next time, it was amazing. It's actually my favorite now.)

So there you have it ... two opposite ends of the spectrum. Between those two books, you're sure to find something perfect and lots of calories while you're experimenting.

go to www.joyofbaking.com and use white butter cake and use almond, vanilla and butter extracts.
or
the cotton country cookbook's old fashioned birthday cake made with the same extracts. I can get you the recipe if you don't/can't find it! It is similar to wedding cake.
For icing, I would look up wilton.com and browse through those. Good luck!

"From-scratch" cake can be overrated. Get a copy of "The Cake Mix Doctor" and go to town. Nothing average about any of her recipes! I made my own wedding cake using that book, and when we ate the top layer on our anniversary, it tasted just as fresh and yummy as the year before. (Frostings, however, should always be homemade, never canned. Blech! Anne has great frosting recipes to go with her cake mix recipes.)

Go to foodnetwork.com and look for some of Ina Garten's recipes. I'm sure they are delicious.

Cakecentral.com.....they have great recipes and pictures of cakes. Good luck!!!

For the best chocolate cake recipe look on the back of the Hershey baking coco container. frost it with buttercream frosting. Confectionair sugar, butter, milk and a little vanilla. Delicious

This the best cake in the world, if you like dense, moist cakes. We make it for every really special occasion in my family.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/white-chocolate-cake/detail....

Just make sure you follow the instructions exactly. You need to cool icing mixture completely when it says to cool, or it won't turn out.

Homemade cakes from scratch are very easy to make. Any good, complete cookbook has great cake recipes. You can also search online at recipeczar and food tv or just google cake recipes.

The best advice I can give is to sift all your dry ingredients together before adding your wet. This will make your cake lighter. Also, I replace some of the fat with apple sauce. This keeps the cake very moist while making it a little healthier and it does not mess with the taste one bit.

Icing is the easiest. I use cream cheese, a little vanilla and powdered sugar.

Good Luck and here's to many more years!