A cake is at the heart of many a feast, be it celebrated with a friend, a loved one or eaten alone at home. The recipe for the first could be found centuries ago in ancient texts and has been passed down through generations. But are you up to date on the most important part of baking, cooking and eating cake? All you need to know is this easy step-by-step guide.
The first thing to know about baking cakes is that no single recipe will suit everyone. You do not need to spend ages trying out different recipes if you have a basic knowledge of how to bake cakes. I started by making three cakes: chocolate sponge, carrot cake and lemon sponge. There are many variations on these cakes and I decided to get out my trusty recipe book and try various combinations of ingredients in order to see which ones taste best.
The next step was getting the fresh ingredients. I bought 6 lemons from my local supermarket for about £1 each plus some parmesan cheese for an extra £1 or so and some unsalted butter for an extra £1 or so too (butter is cheaper when buying it in bulk). To prepare all this I needed a mixer (I bought this one) but also some bowls, measuring spoons and knives – which aren’t exactly cheap either!
A few more things that I won’t go into here include flour (I used plain old plain white flour), icing sugar – 1 cup per person of all the varieties available, salt (to season the chocolate sponge) – 1 tablespoon per person of baking soda (which can substitute flour), cinnamon sticks – 1/3 teaspoon per person of ground cardamom or 5 cinnamon sticks, vanilla extract – 2 teaspoons per person as well as some pumpkin pie spice which can be simply ground with your blender or bought ready-made from specialist shops).
Now comes the fun bit: how to make sure your cake doesn't fall apart when you put it together! In my case I put two layers sandwiching two layers sandwiching two layers sandwiching two layers sandwiching … until I got to four layers … hmmm … now what?
They don't happen in any particular order because they depend on your oven's temperature and how much icing sugar has been put into the batter – which depends on how sweet you like your cake!
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