Friday, May 1, 2009

Look quickly -- Quickly! Then turn away!

I had to look away while someone else emptied my cake pans... a birthday cake for a colleague, and another crumbly mess.  Is it the humidity here?  Why is it I can't turn out a decent cake, even with parchment paper?  My flour should have had enough gluten in it... is there just so much bayou in the air I need to add less liquid to my baking mixes?  Ughhh.  This is the SmittenKitchen chocolate layer cake.  It's great.  It's just the non-vegan version of the cake I made a few months back.  I need to find another one... maybe the Veganomicon recipe I've had a few times with cream filling?  

1 comment:

hm said...

If it's crumbly, it might mean that you used too much flour / not enough sugar. I don't think in cakes you're relying mainly on gluten for structure (for instance, cake flour is low protein) -- I think it's the starch in the flour, and eggs if you're using them , and the sugar contributes to the texture too.

Or it could have to do with how you cooled the cake -- do you make sure to let it cool in the pan for a while (15-20 min?) before removing it?

Do you oil + flour the sides of the pan? (With chocolate cakes you use cocoa powder instead of flour.)

You probably know all this...