Cakes galore...

I've been studying a lot lately about cakes, gearing up for another competition. I've been reading every book I have about the science behind what goes into making a cake, and learning about the proportions of the different ingredients that you need to be mindful of when you're trying to come up with a balanced recipe. Thanks to those resources, I feel like I'm mastering the basic idea, and am pretty confident now in my ability to create a reasonable cake the first time out, which wasn't the case a year or two ago.

So far, I've tried a Thanksgiving themed cake and a St. Patrick's Day themed cake. Both have been passable and pretty tasty, and a good starting point. I've gotten good feedback on both so far from some willing testers, and I'm going to go back to the rough drafts and keep tweaking them. Fortunately, it's not a stab in the dark, thanks to what I've learned so far, and it shouldn't take too many tries to come up with some cakes that are worth entering.

It's incredibly fun learning about this stuff. I feel fairly confident that if you were to give me a theme, or a list of ingredients you'd want in a cake, I'd be able to come up with a pretty tasty cake. I'm slowly learning what the pros know, little by little. The cool thing for me is that if there is one feature of a cake you don't like, you can dial in to exactly what you're looking for simply by changing one or two ingredients. For example, in the Thanksgiving cake above, there are too many holes on the outside edge of the cake to be a winner, and the cake collapsed a little bit. This is a result of too much leavening. And it's a little too brown for my taste, which is a result of baking soda and the sour cream I included in the recipe, since both contribute to browning in baked goods. Next time, I'll decrease the baking soda and the sour cream, and I should be able to solve those problems.

I've decided for this competition I'll be focusing on Thanksgiving and St. Patrick's Day for sure, with possibilities for Christmas, Halloween and Independence Day. I'll keep you posted on developments.