I love to watch the Icing Artist. She does many videos on baking and how to make cool designs on cakes using frosting and different baking tools. I love to bake and want to learn how to structure my cakes and have a smooth surface when piping frosting, not a lumpy surface. I also want to know how different flavors can work together and taste delicious.
She posts her videos about once a week, which are about eighteen minutes long.
Here is a link to one of her videos:
I've wanted to learn how to make good buttercream that is nice and stiff but not too runny. In some other videos, she explains how to do that and also tries different flavors.
Watching her videos makes me want to bake a cake, and I keep getting ideas for decorating.
Have you ever wondered why bakers use all-purpose flour rather than cake flour when baking? I sometimes wonder, and that's why today's blog post is about the difference between cake flour and all-purpose flour.
I was recently looking for a cake to make for our church's potluck this Sunday, and I couldn't figure out what flavor to do since I didn't want to do vanilla or chocolate. For the last potluck, I made a lemon cake. But this time, I wanted to do a flavor I hadn't done yet, so I chose a strawberry cake with strawberry frosting.
In the ingredients list, it called for cake flour. So I did research, and this is why people will sometimes use cake flour rather than all-purpose flour:
If you want a lighter texture, you would use cake flour since cake flour has less gluten and protein, which causes the cake to be more delicate and spongy. It also has a lighter color than all-purpose flour and is ground finely using soft wheat. You would use cake flour for pastries, cakes, or whatever baked goods you want to have a soft, delicate, light, or spongy texture. The downside is that if you're planning to have a lot of frosting or filling, the cake is liable to crumble or fall apart since it's so delicate and soft.
You would use all-purpose flour if you want a stronger, grittier texture that will hold up well. Since all-purpose flour is ground together from hard and soft wheat, it has more protein and gluten, which causes the texture to be stronger and will hold up well under weight. So, if you want to put lots of frosting, filling, or any heavy weight on your cakes, it will hold up better than if you had used cake flour. Just depends on what texture you like better.
I watched a video of a lady baking two cakes, one using all-purpose flour and the other with cake flour, just to see the difference. The cake made with cake flour seemed lighter in color than the cake made with all-purpose flour. She tried each of them and said the cake made with cake flour tasted so light, airy, and the texture was like a pillow. Then she tasted the cake made with all-purpose flour, which had a grittier and firmer texture. She said she liked the all-purpose flour cake better because she's so used to its texture.
You can use either one. It's really up to your personal preference.
Here is the video of the lady who baked the two cakes:
I finished my mom's birthday cake last Tuesday! I actually did it on Tuesday because I couldn't wait to make it. And today is Friday! I can't wait to taste it tonight! The cake looks pretty nice, but I hoped for something a little different. I will tell you the difficulties I had with making the cake. But first, here's what it looks like now:
Difficulties:
So when I was putting on the chocolate frosting and trying to smooth it out, it started to harden kind of like really fast, so when I tried smoothing it out, it made it worse! So next time when I make another cake, I have to move fast. Plus, I didn't actually have a smoother because I usually use our bread cutter, but that works fine, so I was looking for it all over the kitchen, but finally, I found it, and I tried using it, but it was too late the frosting didn't want to smooth out! And also the cake is also leaning a bit after I put the flowers and all the decorations on it so I couldn't fix it, which is also bothering me very much. And I should have put more raspberry filling in the middle. I don't think I put much in there. That is all my difficulties. I think.
But I did have fun decorating and baking the cakes!
I made a cake that has the American flag on it, and we are going to be eating it this Friday because Fridays are the days we usually go with our friends to the lake club and have dinner. So I will be bringing it to the lake club Friday. It represents the Fourth of July. I am also hopefully going to be making another cake for fireworks at the lake club that we are also going to be going to. But that is next week, so I will wait a few days before making that cake.
The cake is a spice cake. And I used cream cheese frosting! I LOVE cream cheese frosting because it just tastes soo good!! The funny thing is that I don't like cream cheese, but it does taste so good for frosting!! Regular butter frosting tastes too sweet for me. Cream cheese frosting is very sweet, but it is a lot better than regular frosting, in my opinion. So I used cream cheese frosting. I died it red, white, and blue and just piped it on! Oh, I forgot to say that for the cake I died it red, white and blue also but I didn't die one layer red and another layer white and the other layer blue. I died one layer of red, white, and blue. So it has a cool design in the middle! I have done it before with other colors, and it turned out great! So hopefully, it will look cool on the inside again for this cake. Here is a picture of the cake:
I will post another picture when we cut into it Friday so you can see the design in the cake.
But I messed it up. I messed up on the frosting part. How I did it was I think I put too much butter or didn’t let it mix longer and just did something with it. The texture of the frosting was like eating butter. I really didn’t like it. I really wanted to redo it but I couldn’t because I just went out of the powdered sugar. So I just left it how it was and put a pretty design on it.
Here is the picture of the cake!
The cake itself I didn’t really like too because just something about it. Well I did kind of messed up on the recipe. I was putting all the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl like it said and when I was still putting the dry ingredients, I accidentally put the milk in! And I didn’t want to throw away anything so I left it like that. I was pretty sure it was ok. But when I tasted it I think it was just not fluffy enough. I don’t know. I still ate it because it wasn’t too bad.
And the next time I make a cake I want to put some lemon in it or something instead of a plane white cake. And I want to get fondant for the cake so it will be nice and smooth! And not mess up on the frosting and put a beautiful design for the cake with the frosting!
This week and last week I made, two batches of donuts, carrot cake, and the white cake that I just made too.
I have a picture of the carrot cake I made!
The carrot cake was really good!!
Whenever I just finished baking something or decorating something I just want to bake another thing! And I don’t really want to eat it, I just want to bake and decorate! Actually that could be a great t-shirt or apron! I just want to bake and decorate!!
