which recipe source would you trust more?

[DT4K]

He doesn't need skill so much as practice, which is pretty much what magnus has been saying the whole time. I would pick a recipe of a cake that I liked a lot and start from there. prepare a couple of cakes until he gets the recipe down pat and there you go. OP is not going to learn how to bake a really good cake in one shot. lord know I've tried.

sorry OP, there's no way around the fact that you need a couple of tries.

I still think that any reasonable intelligent person who can read a recipe, follow directions, and knows the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, can make a good cake the first time. I'm still not understanding exactly what you need to practice? How many tries does it take to figure out how to put 1 tsp of baking powder in a bowl? Or 3 cups of flour? Or 1 cup of sugar. Those all seem like tasks that can be accomplished successfully on the first try.

OP, I'll re-iterate my recommendation of foodnetwork.com. Search for cake and pick something with 4 or 5 stars that sounds good and is listed as "easy".

 

[nageov3t]

I don't think my test cake came out all that bad... used 2 recipes from america's test kitchen (chocolate layer cake + peanut butter frosting)

my frosting application skills need work

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

You're kind of contradicting yourself. You said making a good tasting cake is harder. Then you said baking is a science.
If it's a science, than anyone who follows the directions of the recipe correctly will end up with a virtually identical cake. And assuming the recipe is good, it will be a good tasting cake.

So no, making a good tasting cake is NOT harder. At least not substantially.
Now making a good looking cake, is a whole different ball game. My cakes look amateur, but they always taste good.

no I'm not. I'd say it would depend on how you're baking, from a box or from scratch. Most people don't properly bake. True baking is best done by weighing ingredients, not measuring them by volume, and most home cooks won't or can't weigh ingredients. This still leaves a lot of variation. A slight miscalculation of the ratios by volume measuring can lead to quite different results.

I will give you a good tasting cake is much easier to achieve than a good looking cake.

 

[DrPizza]

I'm surprised Magnus hasn't pointed this out - there's a lot more to it than simply measuring out the ingredients. Mixing - how rapidly & how long can have a huge effect on the texture of the cake, as well as a subtle effect on the flavor. Look at the ingredients on a boxed cake mix - there are things there that you're not going to find on the store shelf. They're there so that there's a bit more leeway for the person preparing the cake.

edit: not cake, but pizza dough - at the restaurant I used to work at, I can still walk in, eat a piece of pizza, and tell you who made the dough that day. The thing is though, the ingredients for the first batch of the day are measured out by the guy who made the dough the previous day. But the final ingredient - water - no one measures this, except for an approximation to start off with. The day's temperature and humidity, as well as other variations have a small effect on how much water is used. If you watched one of the guys who is really good at it, you'd see him adding water about 1/4 cup at a time or less until it's just perfect. That may sound like a lot, but the first ingredient is 50 pounds of flour; these are big batches. The amount to be added & any additional mixing time is judged by the consistency of the dough. After you've made enough dough for a hundred thousand pizzas or so, you get pretty good at it. But, when you're just learning, even mixing up the dough that the previous guy measured out for you, life is going to suck when you can't quite get the right consistency. And, fwiw, just based on that consistency, I've transferred that over to smaller, personal home-sized batches. No need to measure, except perhaps the yeast. The rest is by eye.

 

[feralkid]

That is exactly my point. The Betty Crocker cookbook does NOT teach basics, it teaches steps.


That's fine, now what if you have 17 people to feed. You know the OP's aversion to extra cake. Do you try and cut the existing cake into 17 pieces? Good luck. Do you merely find a factor to multiply times the existing recipe to give you 17 portions? I guarantee you will throw the ratios off and have a sucky cake. The point is measuring, estimating and, understanding ratios comes in mighty handy. Do you need to know all this to bake a decent cake? No, which is why I recommended a cake mix.

Oh yeah, which of you is a Chef or Baker who would know more than I about food? Didn't think so.

You're not wrong Walter...

 

[AmerDoux]

I don't think my test cake came out all that bad... used 2 recipes from america's test kitchen (chocolate layer cake + peanut butter frosting)

my frosting application skills need work

Looks great! I voted America's Test Kitchen in the pole. If you are interested in learning about the why's and how's, their recipes always provide the results of their testing step-by-step. It's nice to know why you should use a particular flour or when its better to use a chilled vs. room temperature butter, etc. Baking is a nice combination of science and art.

So how did it taste?

 

[lozina]

I am getting more and more into cooking. I love watching Good Eats on food tv.

For recipes I access FoodTV's internet recipe database, and also recipezaar.com

 

[sjwaste]

Loki: Looks good. Is that a test cake? Let us know how it tastes!

For everyone else saying baking is easy and requires nothing but proper measurement, go dig up a recipe and try a chiffon cake. Report back with results from your first attempt.

 

[nageov3t]

Looks great! I voted America's Test Kitchen in the pole. If you are interested in learning about the why's and how's, their recipes always provide the results of their testing step-by-step. It's nice to know why you should use a particular flour or when its better to use a chilled vs. room temperature butter, etc. Baking is a nice combination of science and art.

So how did it taste?

I'll find out tomorrow! it's sitting in the fridge for now.

my icing skills definitely need work, but the frosting tasted good at least made it from scratch... egg whites and sugar (beaten over a pot of boiling water till they hit 150 degrees), butter, and peanut butter.