How to make cakes at home: recipes for beginners

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Cooking cakes is a real art, and in order to achieve real heights in it, chefs spend many years practicing. But tell me, what woman would not like to please her family with a delicious and incredibly beautiful cake?

In fact, such a desire is feasible, since it is quite possible to make cakes at home. Where to start and what culinary tricks do you need to master in order to feel confident in this business?

Types of cake dough

Before you set foot on the difficult path of a pastry chef, you should understand a little about the types of cake layers. There are quite a few of them (about 10), however, for a novice master at first, the three most common ones will be enough:

• biscuit;
• sand;
• puff.

They all differ in ingredients and cooking methods.

Cooking a biscuit

Many housewives will surely call a biscuit one of the most capricious types of dough and they will be right in their own way. The fact is that this kind of cake requires careful observance of the rules, this applies to the quantitative composition and sequence of stages.

Before making the biscuit cake,you should prepare all the necessary ingredients for this. You can take the classic biscuit recipe as a basis:

• large chicken egg - 4 pieces;
• high grade flour - 100 g (approximately 4 tablespoons with a slide);
• sugar - 150 g (on average there will be 5 tablespoons with a slide).
• you can optionally add a little vanillin or a bag of vanilla sugar.

This amount of ingredients is enough for 1 small cake with a diameter of 18-20 cm. It will turn out to be quite high, so after baking it can be safely cut into 2 or even 3 cakes. If the baking dish is large enough, you can increase the amount of ingredients or make several individual cakes.

Now you can start preparing the dough. How to make a biscuit cake lush and beautiful? There are a few tricks for this.

Biscuit secrets

1. Dishes for making dough must be perfectly clean and dry.
2. The whites must be separated from the yolks and beaten separately from each other.
3. Proteins begin to beat at minimum speed without sugar. When the mass increases in volume, gradually add sugar and increase the speed of the mixer to the maximum (in this mode, beat for 5-7 minutes). In total, half of the total amount of sugar is added to proteins.
4. Add the remaining half of the volume of sugar and vanillin to the yolks (optional). Beat the mixture with a mixer for about 5 minutes. During this time, the volume should increase, and the sugar grains should completely dissolve.
5. ⅓ proteins spread toyolks and mix very carefully, sifted flour is also sent there. The remaining proteins are added at the end of the batch.
6. The oven should be preheated to 180 degrees by this time. Bake the cake for 30 minutes.
7. After baking, do not rush to take out the biscuit, it is better to leave it for a few minutes in the switched off open oven.

Important! Do not open the oven door for the first 20 minutes. In this case, the biscuit will settle and turn out to be unbaked.

Sand cake

At first glance, a shortcrust pastry cake seems quite simple and devoid of all sorts of frills. However, do not jump to conclusions. Properly selected cream will perfectly soak the cakes and make them soft and tasty. They will literally melt in your mouth. How to make a cake exactly like this?

The list of ingredients contains:

• butter - 200 g;
• eggs - 2 or 3 pieces;
• sugar - half a glass;
• flour - 2 or 2.5 cups;
• baking powder;
• vanillin (you can refuse it if you wish).

1. Beat the eggs lightly with a whisk and carefully pour into the container where the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, baking powder and vanillin) are prepared.
2. Butter should be soft enough for easy kneading. It is cut into pieces and laid on flour.
3. All ingredients are chopped with a knife until the dough turns into small crumbs.
4. The resulting mixture is formed into a ball, covered with cling film and sent for a couple of hours in the refrigerator.
5. After that, the entire volume of the test is divided by 3pieces and roll out each cake with a thickness of 0.5 cm.
6. Pierce the cakes in several places with a fork, place one of them on a dry baking sheet and bake in the oven for about 5-10 minutes at a temperature of 180 degrees. Repeat with the rest of the cakes.

Creams with condensed milk, sour cream and custard are perfect for such cakes.

Puff cakes

For many people, puff cakes are invariably associated with Napoleon cake, although the classic recipe for this delicacy has absolutely nothing to do with puff pastry. This can be explained as follows: the preparation of this cake requires a lot of effort and quite a lot of time. Housewives prefer to cook such complex dishes on holidays. As a lightweight recipe for quick cooking, they began to use puff pastry. How to make puff pastry Napoleon cake?

To make you will need the following:

• margarine or butter - 250 g;
• flour - 3 cups;
• ice water - about ¾ cup;
• s alt - half a teaspoon;
• apple vinegar - about 1 tbsp. spoon.

1. Butter or margarine is taken out of the refrigerator to warm up a little and become slightly soft. Water, on the contrary, is put in the refrigerator.
2. The butter is divided into 3 parts.
3. Mix several ingredients: vinegar, s alt, water and flour.
4. The resulting dough is rolled out into a fairly thin layer and smeared over its entire surface with one part of the oil. The cake is twistedrolled or folded into an envelope. The workpiece is removed in the cold for 15-20 minutes.
5. Repeat 2 more times.
6. Small pieces are cut from the dough and the cakes are rolled out, the thickness of which does not exceed 2 or 3 mm.
7. The cake is pierced with a fork and sent to the oven for about 15 minutes.

Before you make the Napoleon cake, you should also think about the filling. Custard, protein and sour cream are perfect here.

Cooking buttercream

As you might guess by the name, the basis of any cream in this category is butter. Due to its dense texture, this cream perfectly retains its shape. This feature is highly valued in the art of confectionery, as it is a pleasure to decorate a buttercream cake.

Flowers, bows, inscriptions, intricate patterns - the scope for imagination is simply huge, while decoration requires a minimum: the cream itself and a pastry syringe with nozzles. As for the recipe, there are quite a few of them. A cream is considered classic, consisting of:

• 200g butter;
• 4 cups of powdered sugar;
• 1 sachet vanilla sugar;
• 2 or 3 tablespoons of milk (the amount depends entirely on the consistency of the cream you want to achieve).

When choosing ingredients, pay special attention to the quality of the oil. It should not have an extraneous taste, smell and s alty taste, because all this will be reflected in the cake.

Cookingcream comes down to whipping softened butter with powder until a homogeneous mass is obtained. First, beat the butter with a mixer (this takes about 5 minutes). The powder is not poured immediately, but gradually, all the while you should continue to work with the mixer. Milk is added almost at the very end. After that, beat the mass for no more than 30 seconds.

How to make a custard cake

In the list of the simplest and most delicious creams, it is impossible not to mention custard. Such a recipe is worthy of the attention of every housewife, because the custard is quite easy to prepare and is suitable for soaking cake layers, filling waffles, baskets, tubes, and as an independent dessert. The only drawback is the rather fluid consistency, which makes it impossible to use such a cream for decoration.

For cooking cream you need to purchase:

• granulated sugar - approximately 300 g;
• milk - 1 l;
• eggs - 4 pieces;
• flour - 100–120 g;
• butter - a little (20 g will be enough);

Having de alt with the composition, you should understand: how to make a cake. According to the recipe, you need to mix milk with sugar in a saucepan and cook it over low heat until the sugar grains are completely dissolved.

While the milk is heating, mix eggs and flour in a bowl until smooth.

Pour 2 ladles of boiling milk into the egg mixture, mix thoroughly and add two more. After that, the pan is sent back to the stove.

Cook this cream until it thickens. Atyou need to constantly stir it with a whisk.

The pot is removed from the stove and cooled.

Sour cream

Delicious delicate cream based on sour cream and sugar - just what you need to impregnate sand, puff and many other types of cakes. It is worth preparing such a delicacy from sour cream with a high percentage of fat content (from 30%). Only in this case it is possible to achieve the correct consistency and avoid spreading.

However, this impregnation option has one significant drawback. Housewives should take care of this even before making a cake. Sour cream is a perishable product, so there is no point in preparing it in advance. It is prepared immediately before the soaking of the cakes.

Cake assembly

Many housewives, looking at the work of masters, ask the same question: how to make beautiful cakes. Real confectionery gurus emphasize: not only the preparation of cakes and cream, but also assembly requires a special approach.

You need to start by giving the cakes the right size.

• Sand and puff cakes should be adjusted in shape and size immediately after baking, while they are still soft enough and do not crumble much.
• Biscuit is advised to collect in the form, while smearing the cakes with cream. In this case, it will take very little time to adjust the shape of the cake.

Mastic decoration

Cake decoration may vary. Options include: designing a cake with buttercream, sprinkling crumbs or nuts on top, using mastic. Necessaryto say that decorating a cake with mastic has become an independent confectionery trend, a kind of art. It is from mastic that the masters manage to fashion various figures, which makes the cake turn into a true work of art.

What do you need to buy before making a fondant cake?

• Marshmallow (chewing marshmallow) - 200 g;
• powdered sugar fine - 500 g;
• water - 2 tbsp. spoons;
• butter - 0.5 tsp.

It is worth noting that marshmallow mastic is very popular due to its ease of execution and good plasticity.

How to make fondant for a cake

Marshmallows (it is better to take them white) are placed in a container, pour 2 tbsp. spoons of water and a piece of oil. The oil will add plasticity and will not allow the mass to stick to your hands. The container is placed in a water bath and marshmallows are constantly stirred. When heated, the mass will increase.

When the consistency in the container becomes homogeneous, the container is removed from the water bath and kneading begins. At the same time, powder is gradually added and interfered with with a spoon. After thickening, the mass is kneaded by hand according to the dough kneading principle.

The result should be an elastic, fairly thick dough that can be used immediately, or wrapped in cling film and stored in the refrigerator for up to several weeks.

How to make colored mastic for a cake? To give color during the kneading process, add a few drops of food coloring. Another variant -cover with paint an already finished decoration (using a regular brush).

So, is it difficult to learn how to make cakes? Like any occupation, confectionery requires practice, but in general there is nothing particularly difficult in this process. Any woman can prepare a luxurious cake for the holiday, which will surely surprise her guests.