stage. If it springs back, the center is done, the cake is baked. Another useful sign is when the side

shrinks back from the pan as it is beginning to dry out.

If you really must open the oven door at a critical stage, do it very gently to avoid the

slightest jarring. Whatever you do, don't touch the cake until it is close to being fully set. Even

heavy steps on a bouncy kitchen floor can disrupt the process. Cancel any dance steps practice

session in the kitchen while the cake is in the oven. Coffee cakes, which are baking powder

leavened and contain less egg, don't collapse as easily. They don't rely on egg white foam structure

but on the starch in the flour, giving a framework less sensitive to shaking. Also, they have a high

amount of flour relative to moist ingredients, thus a thicker batter giving them more stability before

setting in the oven.

Cake and torte recipes generally call for a moderate oven temperature so the batter will

expand slowly. Are any of the following symptoms familiar? In too hot an oven the outside surface

solidifies into a crust that prevents the cake to expand any more. In too cool an oven the cake

expands but no crust forms, and the entire cake dries out too much—a good reason to have an

accurate oven before you endeavor to bake the perfect cake.

Cake mixes

Cake mixes are nothing more than the combination of ingredients that you always have on

hand and can mix together in two minutes flat—flour, salt, baking powder (or baking soda), sugar,

dehydrated hydrogenated vegetable shortening (you would use real shortening), possibly powdered

milk and dehydrated eggs (you would use fresh milk and fresh eggs). Commercial mixes do have

other ingredients like emulsifiers, foaming agents and gums that you cannot add yourself as these

are only commercially available. An emulsifier is the only one useful—it helps to make high-

volume, very tender cakes by preventing the coalescence of bubbles in the fat-liquid emulsion.

Sifting together your own ingredients, emulsifier or not, gives you more satisfaction than

using a prepackaged commercial product and it is more economical. And you eliminate a dozen

chemicals from your cake that packaged mixes sport to extend their shelf life and prevent clumping.

Unless you are really short of time, or totally intimidated by baking (in either case you are not likely

to read this section), mix your own.

There are cakes and then there are cakes

There are two basic types of cakes: butter cake and sponge cake. This list does not include

simple coffee cakes and high-flour cakes such as the popular carrot cake. Those cakes are related to

quick breads much more than to cakes, using similar batter, and will not produce the tender, light,

fluffy texture of a low-flour, high-egg cake. An example for a butter cake is a standard chocolate

cake, while angel food cake is a good example for the family of sponge cakes. Their methods of

preparation are completely different, and so are the precautions you take for best results. Neither

butter cake nor sponge cake is particularly difficult to prepare. They are excellent basic cakes to

learn to bake. Once you have experience to bake those two types, you can undertake just about any

elaborate cakes.

Butter cakes

As the name suggests, in butter cakes the original fat was butter. This is an old name that

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