The hardest thing about making a layer cake is getting evenly sliced layers. It never seems like it will be that difficult to level the rounded top off of a single layer or cake, or to cut a taller cake into two even pieces, but even pros end up with uneven layers sometimes. The trick to getting even layers is to have a very large knife and a steady hand, but if this kind of thing isn’t your forte, a Frieling Layer Cake Slicing Kit is much more reliable than “eyeballing” your layers. The cake slicing kit comes with a large, adjustable ring mold that fits around cakes from 8 to 10-inches in diameter. The mold has seven evenly spaced slots on it, and you simply run the included knife straight through those slots to get even layers. It is foolproof, and lets you cut a cake into anywhere from 2 to 8 layers in no time at all. Once the cake is cut, you remove the ring and use the included cake lifter – which is a very large, flat spatula – to pick up the layers easily. You can then reassemble your cake, frosting and filling as you go, on your cake stand.
This tool kit isn’t a kitchen must-have unless you bake a lot of cakes, but if you do a lot of layer cake baking, it can really streamline the assembly process and save you a lot of time in the long run – especially because you know that with the ring to guide you, you’ll always have perfectly even cake layers every time you use it.
Have you ever gone to slice a cake and ended up creating funky, uneven slices that weren’t as attractive as you’d hoped? Cutting a cake badly has happened to everyone at one time or another. Fortunately, it doesn’t take anything away from the taste of a cake, but using a gadget like the Mindstorm Cake Cutter would ensure that you get perfectly shaped cake slices, too. The mechanized cake cutter was built from Legos and uses a Mindstorm NXT processor, two touch sensors and three motors to do its work. The user simply enters the number of slices that they want to get from the cake, from 1 to infinity (although you would want to choose a number that would provide satisfying slices, of course), and the machine divides that cake into perfectly even slices. The “blade” is actually the lid of a can, which works like a pizza cutter to roll through the cake.
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Toothpicks are the standard thing to use when testing cakes and other baked goods for doneness. They are something that just about everyone has in their kitchen and they are reliable. But there are occasions when you might want something longer than a toothpick to test the doneness of a bundt cake or other deep baked good. These are situations when a piece of an Amish Cake Tester Broom might come in handy. This handmade broom is made for testing the doneness of cake, a throwback to days when people used pieces of straw – not toothpicks – to test their baking. The broom is made of corn-husk straws, and to use it you simply break one off and stick it into your cake. Each of the straws is about 5-inches long, so you have plenty of room to get into just about any baked good. I happen to like the way that you can easily hang the broom on a hook or knob near your oven, and it has such a charming look to it that it makes a great little gift for baking buddies.
Most recipes tell you what a particular dish is – vanilla cake, chocolate chip cookies, etc – but some also give you a little more information by telling you about where that recipe is from. A New York-Style Cheesecake is a great example of this, and this dense and creamy type of cheesecake is instantly recognizable. Some recipes, however, are associated with different places and it is unclear why. This is one of those cakes. I’ve seen similar recipes described as Breton Apple Cakes and Dorset Apple Cakes with little explanation as to what gives them those names. I have to assume that people who live in Brittany and Dorset have a fondness for this type of cake – and I don’t blame them one bit because it is delicious.
The cake is so packed with fresh apples that it verges on being an apple cobbler. It is very moist and tender, with a great flavor of butter, vanilla and apples. It’s just about impossible to go wrong with that combination. The batter is easy to whip up and it is very thick, so you need to fold the apples into it and them spread it into your baking pan. The apples should be thinly sliced, as that ensures that they will cook to tenderness as the cake bakes. It also results in a very attractive finished cake. I used Fuji apples and would recommend a fairly sweet or sweet-tart apple (not tart apples, like Granny Smith) for this cake because the cake batter is not too sweet on its own and a lot of the sweetness and flavor comes from those apples.
No matter what you call it, this is an excellent apple dessert. The cake can be served warm if you’re ready to eat it right away, but will keep very well for a day or two if you cool it and put it in an airtight container. I’d recommend eating it just a bit warm with confectioners’ sugar or ice cream.
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Some of my favorite cookbooks are not slick hardbound volumes full of colorful photos. Some of them are old, well-used booklets of simple recipes that were put together decades ago for church and school groups with recipes from neighborhood mothers and wives. The colorful books are still wonderful, of course, but there is nothing like seeing some of the recipes that were popular – for better and for worse – just a half century or so ago. I like the entertainment value in some of the “bad” recipes and the nostalgia of the great ones – and I would put Tomato Soup Cake in the latter category. If you have a cookbook like the one I described, I can almost guarantee that a version of this recipe is in there.
Tomato soup cake was, and is, a secret ingredient cake. This means that while tomato soup is one of the main ingredients in the cake, you can’t really taste it in the finished product. Versions of this recipe appeared, at various times, on the backs of cans of tomato soup. Condensed tomato soup is what most of the older recipes called for. I never have condensed tomato soup in my pantry, so I’ve adapted my own version of the classic tomato soup cake to use tomato juice or V8 juice instead (I usually use V8 juice; both work equally well).
Tomato juice seems like a strange ingredient compared to other cakes, but what you end up with is a sweet and moist spice cake that has a great flavors from all of the cinnamon, allspice and cloves in the recipe. It does not taste like tomato soup or tomato juice at all, although it is reminiscent of a carrot cake or pumpkin bread. You can definitely feel good about getting at least one serving of veggies when you eat a slice! Cream cheese frosting is a good match for spice cakes, and just a little bit makes a very nice topping for the finished cake.
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