My mother was a clever cook. Before it was chic to disguise vegetables into ordinary foodstuffs for young picky eaters, Mom used a variety of techniques to surreptitiously keep us climbing the food pyramid. Equipped with her trusty blender, she whirred a veritable smorgasbord of vegetables and fruits into drinks, soups, and binders for healthy and hearty dishes. Meatloaf was truly a “mystery meat,” but one we all loved and gobbled up, and unknowingly eating “kid poison.”
A few months ago, I was reading a recipe from another blog, Baked Bree. It was just before my birthday, and I fell in love with her Funfetti Cake. I scrolled down through the instructions and photographs, and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the baked cakes cooling in the pans. What’s that? How did she do that??
I wasn’t the only one who took notice, and Bree let us in on her secret. She uses Wilton’s Bake-Even Cake Strips. These strips are padded strips of cloth sewn together. As you’re getting the cake ready, put the strips in a bowl and cover them with water. They should be totally submerged, and quite wet when you lift them out of the bowl.
Just before you pour the batter into the prepared pans, you remove one strip at a time, run the strip between your thumb and forefinger to remove as much water as you can, and wrap the strips around the outside of the cake pan. Fasten the strip with a T-shaped pin that’s included. Put the cake pans in the oven and bake.
The chocolate layers turned out beautifully. You can find the bake-even strips wherever Wilton cake supplied are sold. They even sell another package of four varying size strips for differently sized cakes.
This cake is perfect! I’ve made a lot of cakes in my time, almost always from boxes. Over the last few years, I’ve searched for perfect chocolate and vanilla cake recipes, and this chocolate cake was my recent discovery. My former attempts have either been dry, or the layers fall in the middle. The January/February 2013 issue of Food Network Magazine featured two basic cake recipes. From these, bakers can add flavors, fillings and frostings to make a special cake for any occasion. And FN did just that – they printed recipes for 12 unique birthday cakes, one for each month. If you’re looking for inspiration, I would encourage you to visit the site.
This is the cake my grandson, Quinten, eyed as he was looking through the magazine. Isn’t this pretty?
I was also excited to find the chocolate cake recipe calls for sour cream. I love sour cream, buttermilk or yogurt in cake batters. They taste richer to me, and produce a moister cake. So, I’m going to copy the chocolate recipe with a link to the Food Network article (above).
