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All the advice I’ve heard, tested and collated for convenience & accuracy

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1. Always wear shoes and socks (sounds stupid, but important!)
2. Premeasure all ingredients (measuring all the ingredients before beginning to mix may create more dishes to wash, but it makes the process more organized and more fun)

Equipment

1. Use cake pans that will allow the batter to come up at least to 1/2 full; invest in 9×1 1/2 pans
2. Increase beating speed if you have a hand mixer, yet the recipe assumes a stand mixer (ie, if it says beat on medium, you would beat on high)
3. Use glass or stainless steel mixing and prep bowls rather than plastic

Choosing and Adjusting Recipes

1. If the recipe uses oil, does it have butter, fruit puree, enough egg whites or leavening to ensure that the cake rises? (Oil = moist, but potentially heavy)
2. Replacing some of the sugar with brown sugar or honey will let the cake stay moist longer
3. Replacing some of the butter with oil will let the cake stay moist longer as well (I don’t like using all oil b/c it’s too wet)
4. For flavor depth and subtlety, consider replacing vegetable oil with a nut oil or the liquid with buttermilk
5. Baking powder should not exceed one to one and a quarter tsp per cup of flour; baking soda no more than quarter tsp to one cup flour.
6. Adjust levels of baking powder and soda if you change pans (for broader pan that makes shallower batter depth, use less than if you use a small, deep pan)
7. If the frosting is too sweet, consider replacing the heavy cream with sour cream
8. Adjust egg whites to improve dryness (if it’s too wet, add one egg white; if too dry, take one out)

Ingredients

1. Use room-temperature ingredients
2. Use brand-name confectioner’s sugar
3. Avoid artificial extracts, especially artificial vanilla
4. Use best quality flour (unbleached or cake flour), chocolate (only cocoa butter-based!), and cocoa
5. For best flavor, use high-ratio shortening (not Crisco, but Alpine or Sweetex); for whitest appearance, use Snowdrift
6. On Butter
• Never use shortening or spreads
• Should be about 65 degrees when added (using cold bowl and beaters will help)
1. On Eggs
• Whip yolks and whites and separate eggs only in glass or stainless steel bowls, never plastic or aluminum.
• Separate while cold; cover bowls with plastic wrap to bring to right temperature
• Use at room temperature (put in bowl of warm tap water if necessary)
• Make sure to removed the chalazae (gooky connective tissue)
1. On Flour
• Cake flour is best if you want a tender crumb
• Can also use or (Southern) bleached all-purpose
• Unbleached all-purpose flour often has too high protein content (unless you want a particularly dense cake)
• Never use bread flour
• Avoid self-rising unless the recipe calls for it.

Measuring and Sifting

1. For flour and cocoa, always whisk before spooning it into measuring cup, and always sift
2. Double-sifting the flour, salt, and leaveners will help (if you have the time)
3. Buy shortening in stick form to facilitate measurement

Mixing and Blending

1. Blend leaveners with flour very, very evenly
2. Creaming butter and sugar is very important: don’t skimp (even a whole five minutes would be great; or, 3 minutes for butter, then add sugar w/mixer on, then mix for 4 minutes)
3. Periodically scrape down the bowl
4. After the flour has been added to the butter or liquids, do not overbeat.
5. Creaming method = light batter (aerates the fat); two-step method = fine, close texture (resists gluten formation)
6. If alternating flour and liquid, add lots of flour on the first batch
7. Folding: 1) Mix a little of the material you’re going to fold in, with the bowl of batter (to prep the batter for folding better); 2) have lighter mixture poured on top of heavier mixture; with spatula, move downward into the bowl, drag across bottom, bring upwards and to the side to invert bottom and top of batter (kind of like flipping a pancake); turn bowl a little and repeat until no streaks are left. Do not overfold

The Pan

1. Grease with shortening and flour (never butter), with Wilton Cake Release (use generously), or a spray with flour in it
2. Place parchment circle on bottom; grease it
3. Batter should fill half to two-thirds of the pan

Baking and Inverting

1. Put rack on the top of the bottom-third (in other words, 2/3 down, so cake will sit around the middle)
2. Use oven thermometer to check temperature
3. Try not to open oven until within 5 minutes of being done.
4. Cool in pan 5-10 minutes (no longer!)
5. Invert: From bottom to top, arrange cooling rack, cake in pan, layer of parchment, cooling rack. Flip. Remove top cooling rack, place on counter, cover with parchment, and flip cake right side up. (Cake will rest right side up on parchment paper-covered cooling rack.)
6. Let cool for at least 1 hour (4 hrs best)
7. For ease in moving the layers, place on same-sized cardboard round (also, because the cake shrinks, using a round the same size as the pan will give you a 1/2 inch guide for the outside frosting layer, as long as you move the spatula completely level vertically)

Leveling and Assembling

1. To aid leveling, use a cold, firm cake (put in refrigerator for 20 minutes or freeze for 5 minutes, OR freeze cake, cut it, and then thaw completely before decorating)
2. If you cut the cake with a large knife, use a sawing motion while rotating cake on a turntable
3. If you cut the cake with a cake leveler, minimize any sawing motion and just glide through the cake, keeping the leveler legs firmly pressed against countertop and keeping the cake still with the non-cutting hand
4. First step: trim domes and/or hard crusts using cake leveler or large knife
5. Second step: torte into layers if desired using cake leveler or large knife
6. Optional third step: if you need to syrup uncut surfaces, trim off the crust with a large knife
7. When moving the cake layers, keep the middle of the cake supported (rather than the edges)
8. Cover the cake board with attractive paper and then with cellophane
9. Smear a dollop of frosting between cake board and turntable, as well as between cake board and bottom layer of cake
10. Choose the most stable layer for the bottom (the most even and thick layer) and place right side up
11. Use 1/2 cup frosting between each layer (piping through pastry bag outfitted only with a coupler base will ensure even layers and won’t take that much extra time)
12. If you have a particularly gooey filling or worry that the assembled cake will be uneven, put the first cake layer, covered with the first layer of filling, in the freezer for 5 minutes or fridge for 15 minutes to harden the filling (that way, you can slide the second cake layer until it’s in the perfect place to make the layers even).
13. Choose the least attractive, least even, or least stable layers for the middle. (Place broken or cracked layers right above the bottom layer.)
14. Middle layers should be placed upside down (smoothest part on top)
15. Middle layers should be placed in such a way that levels the cake (match thin parts of one layer with thick parts of another)
16. Insert extra dollops of frosting underneath sagging portions; use less frosting above bulging portions
17. Choose the smoothest-bottomed cake for the top layer
18. Top layer should be placed upside down (smoothest part on top)
19. When all layers are assembled, refrigerate until cold (20 minutes)

Frosting

1. Don’t use frosting that’s too firm, or it will break the cake
2. Use a firm yet gentle hand to frost
3. Always remove spatula from cake perpendicularly
4. First, remove loose crumbs with a pastry brush (or, gently blow them off)
5. Next, spread the crumb coat: Apply thin layer of thinned icing (reserve a small bowl of icing for crumb coating and add teaspoons water until you have thin consistency; alternatively, use a fruit glaze, made of heated and strained jam; or, just use frosting that’s a little warm) to cake (start at top, forcing crumbs down to the bottom and then off cake; with ganache, crumb coat could be only a few tablespoons spread thinly and then refrigerated for 5 minutes OR half the ganache poured on and refrigerated for 20 minutes)
6. After crumb coat, chill (in refrigerator, 20 minutes; or, freezer for 10 minutes)
7. Use bench scraper to smooth sides (must test it on top)

Decorating

Fondant

1. Never use water to smooth holes or tears; use simple syrup.

Sources

• blog.josephhall.com
• Cookwise, Shirley Corriher
• Cake Decorating for Dummies, Joe LeCicero
• RLB’s Cake Bible

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