Page 46 - Chocolate Cake Doctor

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Q. Cakes seem to stick to the bottom of Q. I made a cake in a 13- by 9-inch glass
my tube pan. This doesn’t happen with pan. The cake tasted really great, but I
my Bundt pan. Can I substitute the just didn’t like the way it looked. The bot-
Bundt when the recipe calls for the tube tom looked too well done. Would a metal
pan? pan give me better results?
A. Yes, but watch the Bundt edges so they A. Glass bakes hotter than metal and
don’t overbrown. I find that Bundts cook a causes cakes to burn on the bottom and
little faster than tubes. As for keeping the darken in the corners. I like shiny metal
i
cake from sticking to a tube pan, try greas ng pans. The cake will bake more evenly in
with vegetable shortening, dusting with metal, and it will rise better, too.
flour, and when it’s baked, letting the cake
rest in the pan for about 20 minutes before Q. I am ready to bake a cake in a tube
unmolding. Run a long, sharp knife around pan. When the cake is inverted over the
the exterior and interior edges of the cake, neck of a bottle, what happens to the cake
shake the pan firmly with both hands to during the hour-long cooling process?
loosen the cake from the pan, then invert it Won’t it fall out of the pan?
onto a rack to cool. A. First of all, not all cakes baked in a tube
pan need to be inverted over the neck of a
Q. I often burn the bottom of a cake, or at glass bottle to cool. Regular pound cakes
least it is drier than the rest of the cake. can be baked in a greased and floured tube
Any suggestions? pan, left to cool in the pan for 20 minutes,
A. First, check the oven rack position. and then turned out and cooled completely
Make sure it is as close to the center as on a rack. But angel food and chiffon bat-
possible and not at the bottom of the oven. ters need to be poured into an ungreased
Check your oven temperature with an oven shiny tube or angel food cake pan before
thermometer from the hardware store. Let baking. The angel and chiffon cakes cling to
the oven fully preheat before adding the the sides of the un greased pan as they
cake. And don’t bake light-battered cakes bake. Their volume relies on egg whites,
in dark pans. Also, don’t spray dark pans which expand in the hot oven and cause
with vegetable oil sprays that contain pro- the cake to rise tall. You want to invert these
pellants (alcohol). These cakes in mid air over a bottle neck because
will cause the edges of letting them cool on a rack would deflate
the cake to bake more much of that hard-earned volume. And no,
quickly than the center. they won’t fall out of the pan. Because you