this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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I do not understand the fascination with box mixes. It is so damn easy to measure out 2 cups of sr flour, 250g butter, 1 cup sugar, a bit less than 1 cup liquid etc. Using the same cup for all measurements. Also, for a really nice lemon cake, add the finely grated zest of a lemon to your flour and stir it in. Save the juice for making the icing. Where it really shines.
Wherever it says butter in a recipie, you can sub with marge. Even better, half marge and half lard. Lard is one of the best fats for cake making - really luscious texture and cake keeps better. Harder to mix in - best to use a stand mixer if you have one.
Butter cake is best cooked in a medium to medium/low oven for 1 hour or more. It's not a sponge where the raising agent is stiffly beaten egg white - which is best done in a hotter oven. Chocolate cake is the standard butter cake mix with 1 tablespoon of cocoa/drinking chocolate added to the flour and 1 more tablespoon of liquid.
Roll chopped fruit (any sort) in the flour mix before adding liquid. Stops the fruit from all settling at the bottom of the cake tin during baking. Works especially well with fresh cherries. And strawberries. And raspberries.
Use castor sugar not the regular white sugar - dissolves a lot faster and the cake bakes better.
You can turn regular sugar into icing sugar by whizzing it up in a food processor with the sharp blades in.
Vanilla essence is made from pine bark chips? I stopped using it entirely when I found this out. Be damned if I'll cook with mulch. Extract is the way to go. More expensive, but you use a lot less and the flavour is better.
GREASE AND LINE YOUR CAKE TINS!!!!! Olive oil spray is revolting and doesn't really do the job. Butter or marge is much better. One lump the size of an unshelled hazelnut will do most standard cake tins. For fancy, or if you want the cake to keep fresh out of the fridge, then a crust lining works well. Grease tin as per usual, then mix up 1 dessertspoon of sugar with 1 dessertspoon of flour. Tip that into the tin and tap the tin all around to distribute the mix evenly over all the surfaces of the inside of the tin. Tip out excess. This gives the cake a wonderful brown caramelized crust over all of it bar the top, and keeps the cake fresh for longer.
Cakes cool quicker if you put them upside down on the cooling rack. This also helps level the top which is handy if you don't want to cut off the top before icing.
These cake mixes were given to me and since I've never used no name mixes before I thought why not. Now these cakes are like pancakes which tells me that they may not have been stored properly and all the oof has gone out. Also i added an extra egg so it might have weighted it down a bit. I have never had this problem before with other cake mixes. Also it's a new tin so I may not have greased the sides enough. I think I'll just make trifle out of the rest. I agree with you that it's easy to make from scratch. I'm not really into cake I'm more of a slice girl.
!!! Ever made Lardy cake? Lard and suet can be baking game changers.
Agreed about boxes, but meh they work. Pick a cup and stick to it. Mine is a commemorative from when Taronga borrowed a pair of pandas.
Yes! Lardy cake is magnificent. And you can tweak it so many ways. I still love my butter cakes though. So easy.
I definitely prefer lard/suet for pastry and pie cases - the difference is amazing. And suet crust pastry can be cooked with moist heat for the classic steak & kidney pudding, or pork & onion pudding - one of the glories of cold weather cooking. Sussex Pond Pie too goes much better with lard as the fat for the pastry.
I shall look up Sussex pond. Never heard of it. Have been deeply disappointed in searches for suet. Butchers at Vic market who blinked and asked what it was. Disgraceful!
You can sometimes get suet at farmers markets and local butchers. When I find some, I buy up big and freeze it once grated (which you have to do). Lasts a long time frozen. You can buy premade suet mix in boxes at Colesworth. It's not as good as fresh but will work. Sussex pond pie/pudding is a classic Brit dish - line a well greased pudding basin (any glazed ceramic basin holding about 1-2 litres) with soft suet crust pastry about 3 cm thick. Then line with soft moist brown sugar about 1 cm thick. Then take a big lemon, poke a zillion holes in it with a skewer and put on the sugar layer. The holes have to go right into the centre of the lemon. Cover thickly with more soft brown sugar and drop 2 cloves on the top. Cover with a lid of more 3 cm thick suet crust pastry. Tie greased paper & foil with a pleat in it over the top of the pudding basin as per usual, and steam in a water bath for 1 plus hours over simmering water. And an extra hour doesn't matter. Just DON"T let it boil dry - keep adding boiling water from the kettle if the level gets a bit low. The water should be about halfway up the pudding basin and should never come off the simmer. When done, remove paper/foil, and unmould onto a dish with deep sides. When the pudding is cut, a flood of gorgeous lemony brownish sauce comes out to be eaten with the pastry (which has a fluffy texture like a bao bun but with a crisper outside) and cream or icecream. The actual lemon isn't eaten except by boastful males.
That sounds intriguing, thanks!