For all the years I’ve spent flipping through my egg- and vanilla-spattered editions of the Bible books, I confess I still find myself wondering: who was Rose Levy Beranbaum talking to when she wrote these? Professionals? Indeed just about every professional cake baker doing business today went to school (literally) on the Cake Bible. Yet […]
READ ONI know, I usually have some to offer. This week though, the historical pickin’s are a little slim. I can talk about bundt pans a bit of course. Now me, I instantly assumed that the metal bundt pan dated to about the 1870’s or 80’s, the time in American history when popular baking exploded and […]
READ ONThat question from reader Angela B. this afternoon, referring to the flour that RLB recommends for stick-proofing the bundt pan. In fact Rose’s top recommendation for greasing a baking pan is Baker’s joy, a top-of-the-line nonstick spray that has real flour in it. The trouble is that Baker’s Joy is frequently hard to find, and […]
READ ONSimply because you can only add so much lemon zest to a cake before the tough zest starts to compromise the texture. This cake calls for a whopping two tablespoons of zest, but Rose still wanted more lemon flavor, hence the oil. She says she uses lemon oils over bottled extracts but “there’s lemon oil […]
READ ONIf you’re a music lover, you’ve probably had the experience of following an artist or a band from their early days. You go along for a few years enjoying that thing they reliably do, expecting they’ll go on doing it forever. Then one day you pick up their newest record, hit the play button and […]
READ ONReader Chana asks: What is the difference between Turbinado sugar and “regular” brown sugar (either light or dark brown). Moisture content? Texture? Can brown sugar be used instead of the Turbinado sugar in the Golden Lemon Almond Cake? Can one replace the other in general? Good question(s). Turbinado sugar differs from brown sugar in that […]
READ ONFunny you should mention that. I’ve done a lot of experimenting with sugar in cakes, superfine versus baker’s sugar versus granulated, and I always found I got a finer texture with superfine. However I had a funny experience during an experiment I did with Italian meringue. Against the conventional wisdom I discovered that I could […]
READ ONThrough my own tests I’ve found that cakes made with unbleached flour always fall a little in the center about five minutes after they’re taken out of the oven. The reason for that is because butter cakes rely on flour for their structure, as opposed to a sponge cake like génoise which relies on egg […]
READ ONAt this point in the week, it’s standard operating procedure for me to pose a set of rhetorical questions and then answer them myself. This week I was able to put the questions I had about the cake to the inventor herself, so she’ll be the answer lady.
READ ONAs I mentioned before, trying to stay on track with this interview wasn’t easy (I think I need to take a journalism class). But here’s what Rose had to say on the subject of my criticism and the subject of excess. JP: So let’s focus on what we’re supposed to be talking about today: the […]
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