Cake Love

Picture from Amazon.com

I recently got in a cake-baking mood. I think it came with my discovery of the book "Cake Love: How to Bake Cakes from Scratch" by Warren Brown. He is the founder of the Cake Love bakeries which are located in the Washington, DC area. Over the past month or so I have read the book and tested several of the recipes. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning to bake cakes. The book is full of great step-by-step instructions and photographs.

I will not post all of the recipes in this book on my blog. That would take way too long and I'm sure would violate some sort of copyright rules. Also, I only post recipes on this blog that I have actually made myself. It will take quite awhile before I have tested all of the great recipes in this book. I have tried a few of them so far and they were delicious. I'll post the ones that I've tried. Again, if you are excited about cake baking I highly recommend this book—you can find it at bookstores or on Amazon.com (or maybe even at your local library). There are lots of intriguing recipes in the book that I look forward to making in the future. The book contains many pointers, pictures and step-by-step advice that I can't include here.

Please also note that the recipes I record in this blog are adapted by me. There are some ingredients that I haven't been able to find or that I don't feel like I can afford (like vanilla powder, maple crystals, etc.). I have left them out and made some adaptations, but if you want the "real" Cake Love professional recipes, I encourage you to refer to the book. (The cakes I've made have tasted great, but I'm sure using vanilla beans—which are out of my price range for everyday use—and some of the other ingredients would make it all the better!)

My favorite thing about the book is Warren's attitude about baking. He points out that your cake doesn't need to look like a masterpiece for people to love it. He encourages creativity and experimentation. Have fun with it!

I'll conclude this post by giving some basic pointers and tips that Warren emphasizes in his book:

Basic pointers:

• Measure ingredients (especially flour) with a scale.
• Use a sifter (crank sifter recommended) for flour.
• A good stand mixer (e.g. KitchenAid) is recommended.
  Set out all the ingredients and have them ready. If you do this, the actual cake baking part goes quite quickly.
• Cakes are most easy to frost when they have been refrigerated. I've been making cakes the night before, wrapping them in plastic wrap and storing in the refrigerator, and then frosting and eating the next day. We've even noticed that some of these cakes taste better the second or third day. They keep nicely for about 1 week in the refrigerator.
• Cake flour is not recommended. Warren uses unbleached all-purpose flour. I've been using bleached all-purpose flour.
• Potato starch is used in many of the recipes to decrease the amount of flour but maintain the structure of the cake. Warren calls it his "secret ingredient."
• All recipes from this book call for unsalted butter.
• Extra-fine (or superfine) granulated sugar is strongly recommended because it pulls air into the cake batter better than normal granulated sugar. Warren says that well-made cake batter can be thought of as "ingredients floating around a lot of air." Extra-fine sugar makes for a lighter, better textured cake.
• All recipes in this book call for large eggs.
• Some of the recipes call for whole milk. We usually only have skim milk on-hand. If you have half-and-half, you can use it to turn skim milk into whole milk by adding 1 part half-and-half to 3 parts skim milk (e.g. ¼ cup half-and-half + ¾ cup skim milk = 1 cup whole milk).