Empirical Baker

Sometimes, you just need to recognize what something is.

I attempted to make a red velvet sheet cake, so I could make petit fours. I searched for a while, and came accross this recipe from Imperial Sugar for a Red Velvet Cake Roll. I figured that if I could use it to make a roll, then I could just use it in the jelly roll cake form and make a short stacked cake with it.

The start of the directions were to beat 4 eggs for five minutes. Okay, sure, they got light and fluffy, nice. Add the other wet ingredients, and it was all good.

It then said to beat in the sifted dry ingredients. Which was where (I think) the recipe failed. The batter deflated, and by the end of the two minute suggested beating time, it was more like a liquid than any sort of batter. I put it in the oven and baked it.

It was very uneven, and baked up with large air pockets. The top layer was like a crust, but it was done at 12 minutes.

I turned it out onto a cooling rack (as the recipe said to take it out immediately), and then decided to try one of the edges (since I would be cutting them off anyways).

Egg. It tasted eggy. Which meant that this really was a Sponge Cake. I had tried to make one before from The Simple Art of Perfect Baking. And that cake did the same thing, it tasted like eggs. But, on the good side, it was the perfect cake for petit fours, had it, ya know, been done like it should have :)

As with the previous cake, I knew that I could let it sit and the egg taste would go away. I also know (now) that the red velvet recipe is a sponge cake, and that beating in the dry ingredients was where it went wrong. The cake tastes fine, if a little flat, so I will try it again, and will then fold in the dry ingredients. :)

(The Poured Fondant and Petit Fours is the next post!)