Page 31 - Chocolate Cake Doctor

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freeze well at all. Any cake must be thor- plete the thawing. This allows the layers
oughly cooked before it heads for the to dry out so the frosting will stick to
freezer. You must wrap cakes in the right them.
material or the freezer will rob them of
moisture and flavor. Since it’s easier to
wrap a cake if the frosting is hard, chill
Chocolate Primer: What
cakes with buttercream and cream cheese
You Need to Know About
frostings, uncovered, for at least 20 min-
Working with Chocolate
utes before covering them; then the wrap
won’t pull the frosting off the cake. Place hocolate is one of our most pleasur-
the cake on a cake round and cover it with Cable foods. It lifts our spirits, signals
heavy-duty aluminum foil (never plastic celebration, looks elegant, and brings to
wrap). Or, if your freezer is large enough, mind all sorts of pleasant taste memories.
place it in a plastic cake saver. Cakes But chocolate, for all its good, is a tempera-
stored in deep chest freezers that are not mental ingredient. Fortunately, when we
opened routinely will freeze better than stir it into cake batter or prepare a basic
f
cakes frozen in refrigerator/ reezer com- frosting using it, we don’t have to take it
binations, which are opened many times through a lot of fancy processes. All we
during the day. need to do is buy the right kind of choco-
• Thawing frozen cakes: Most late, store it under optimum con ditions so
cakes—the Bundts, tubes, sheet cakes, that it stays fresh, and melt it properly.
and un rosted layers—thaw just fine If we do these three things,
f
overnight on the kitchen counter. rarely will we experience
Depending on the temperature of your a bump along the way.
kitchen, some cakes with cream cheese
frostings thaw better in the refrigerator
than on the counter. And if the frozen
cake has a creamy frosting or filling con- TYPES OF CHOCOLATE
taining eggs, it absolutely must be thawed Read my lips: no fancy chocolate. First
in the refrigerator for 8 hours to and foremost, don’t use hoity-toity, ex pen -
overnight. By the way, if you plan on sive chocolate for baking. Save it for eating
frosting those unfrosted layers, thaw out of the box with your sweetheart on
them three quarters of the way covered in Valentine’s Day. Chocolate is a delicate
aluminum foil, then uncover and com- and delicious foodstuff, and its flavor is