INTRODUCTION Cakes celebrate the ceremonies and milestones of our lives birthdays, weddings, and almost any other festive occasion and for good reason. No matter the variety layer cakes, sheet cakes, Bundt cakes, cheesecakes brought to the table at the end of the meal, a cake always elicits admiration. Cookies are delightful and pies are tasty, but no dessert is quite as impressive as a beautifully baked and finished cake. Cake recipes don't have to be fussy and difficult, however. Simple, unfrosted varieties such as pound cakes and coffee cakes are just as delicious as their showier layered cousins. In this primer, we'll explain the differences between the various types, as well as the basic steps that are common to nearly all cake recipes. If you're a novice baker, you can start with the simple pound and angel food cakes in the list below and move on to more complicated recipes as you gain confidence. And if you're already experienced, understanding the different categories of cakes and the various options for finishing them will give you a basis for experimenting and creating recipes of your own.

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AIMS The general aim of this article is to bake a fruit cake that is within an acceptable range of edibility and social acceptability, within an acceptable range of resource expenditure in terms of cost and time.

OBJECTIVES In order to achieve the general aim, you will need to achieve the following objectives: 1. To mix and blend ingredients to an adequate standard 2. To prepare a cake tin, insert the cake mixture and remove the cooked cake with minimum structural damage to both cake and hands 4. To acquire sufficient transferrable skills to be able to repeat the baking process at least 5 times unsupervised, with a success rate of 80% 5. To have acquired sufficient confidence to attempt another cake recipe within a period of ONE calendar month of achieving Objective 4.

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TYPES OF CAKES There are many different types of cakes and many different ways of dividing them into various categories, but professional bakers categorize cakes by ingredients and mixing method. (Home bakers tend to categorize cakes by flavoring i.e., chocolate cakes, fruit cakes, and so on—which is helpful when you're trying to decide what to eat, but not as helpful when you're trying to understand how best to make a cake.) Depending on how the batter is prepared, you will find that the final texture (and color, if it is a yellow or white cake) varies. Below is a comprehensive but by no means exhaustive list of the basic types of cakes: Butter (or Oil) Cakes These contain some kind of fat—often butter, but sometimes oil—and baking powder to leaven them or make them rise. If the fat is butter, the ingredients are usually combined using the creaming method, which means that the soft butter and sugar are beaten together in an electric mixer to partially dissolve the sugar and to incorporate some air. Then the dry and wet ingredients are added in alternating doses. This results in a light and airy crumb, though not quite as light as that of a

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sponge cake (see below). The best butter cakes have a moist buttery richness tempered by lightness. Included in this category are:
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Pound Cakes: This is the simplest type of butter cake. A classic pound cake is made with a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. This produces a dense yet tender texture. Pound cakes are heavier than the types of butter cakes used for constructing layer cakes (see below). They're easy to prepare, with the only trick being that the butter must be quite soft when you begin. These cakes are usually very lightly flavored and served plain or topped with a simple glaze or water icing. A pound cake is usually baked in a loaf or Bundt pan. Many coffee cakes, sour cream cakes, and fruit crumb cakes are variations of pound cake.

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Butter (and Oil) Layer Cakes: Many different types of cake can be arranged in layers. However, classic American layer cakes are usually butter or oil cakes. The birthday cake you ate as a child was probably of this type. These cakes are lighter than traditional pound cake, but more moist and flavorful than European-style sponge layer cakes (see below). Cakes in this category include: devil's food cake (the classic chocolate layer cake), golden cakes

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(made with egg yolks, which add richness and a golden color), and white cakes (made with egg whites, which create a lighter, whiter-colored cake).

Sponge and Foam Cakes These are notable more for what they are missing than for what they contain: They usually do not include fat, such as butter or oil, and they do not incorporate leaveners, like baking powder. Instead, volume is created by whipping the eggs or egg whites. The air whipped into the eggs expands during baking, causing these cakes to rise on their own without baking powder. However, the success of this method depends on not deflating the eggs after whipping them. To this end, dry ingredients are usually sifted over and gently folded in, and fat is often avoided, as it would weigh down the foamy batter. This method produces extremely light, airy cakes with a spongy texture but generally less flavor and moisture than butter and oil cakes. The basic types of sponge and foam cakes are:
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Angel Food Cake: This type is made with egg whites alone and no yolks. The whites are whipped with sugar until very firm before the flour is gently folded in, resulting in a snowy-white, airy, and delicate cake that marries
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beautifully with fruit. Most angel food cakes have a spongy, chewy quality derived from their relatively high sugar content and the absence of egg yolks. Baked in ungreased two-piece tube pans, angel food cakes are cooled by being inverted, since this type of cake would collapse if cooled right-side-up in the pan or if removed from the pan while still warm.

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Genoise: This type of sponge cake is made with whole eggs rather than just egg whites, which gives it a richer flavor than angel food cake. The eggs are combined with sugar and gently heated over simmering water, then whipped (heating the eggs allows them to be whipped to a greater volume). Genoise lacks much assertive flavor of its own, but it is often used to construct layered or rolled cakes when a lighter texture than a butter cake is desired. To add flavor and moisture, genoise cake layers are always moistened with a flavored syrup, and they are often sliced into thin horizontal layers and stacked with rich fillings such as buttercream. These layer cakes, common in the coffeehouses of Europe, are called "European-style" to distinguish them from American-style butter layer cakes, which generally have fewer, thicker layers.

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

Biscuit (always pronounced the French way as bees-kwee): This type of sponge cake contains both egg whites and yolks, but, unlike in genoise, the whites and yolks are whipped separately and then folded back together. This creates a light batter that's drier than a genoise but holds its shape better after mixing. For this reason, it's often used for piped shapes such as ladyfingers. If baked in a tube pan like an angel food cake, it makes a very chewy sponge cake that was popular in the early 20th century but has since fallen out of favor. However, it's still known in a slightly different form as the classic Passover sponge cake, in which the flour is replaced by matzoh cake meal and potato starch.

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Chiffon Cake: This fairly recent American creation was invented by a salesman who sold the recipe to General Mills, which spread the recipe through marketing materials in the 1940s and 1950s. A classic chiffon cake is kind of a cross between an oil cake and a sponge cake. It includes baking powder and vegetable oil, but the eggs are separated and the whites are beaten to soft peaks before being folded into the batter. This creates a cake with a tender crumb and rich flavor like an oil cake, but with a lighter texture that's

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more like a sponge cake. Chiffon cakes can be baked in tube pans like angel food cakes or layered with fillings and frostings.

Low- or No-Flour Cakes Cakes made without flour (or with very little) generally have a creamy or silky texture. They can be baked or unbaked:
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Baked Flourless Cakes: These include baked cheesecakes and flourless chocolate cakes. For easy removal, they're often made in a springform pan, though some can also be made in regular round layer cake pans. Often the filled pan is placed in a larger pan that's half-filled with water to insulate the delicate, creamy cake from the oven's strong bottom heat, which might give the baked cake a porous rather than silky texture. This is called baking the cake in a water bath.

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Unbaked Flourless Cakes: These types of cakes are typically molded in a dessert ring or springform pan then simply chilled before unmolding. They include unbaked cheesecakes and mousse cakes. They often have a crust or

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bottom layer that's baked before the mousse is added. Sometimes other layers, such as genoise or biscuit, are alternated with the mousse.

Fruit cakes Are dense, heavy cakes made with candied, dried and glazed fruits (cherries, citron, citrus peel, currants, dates, pineapple, raisins) and nuts (Dundee cake, election cake and pecan whiskey cake, e.g.)

PREPARATION

Shopping for ingredients: 1. Margarine ( 8oz or 250gms), 2. eggs (at least 4 large), 3. flour (mixed, including some self-raising) (10 oz or 300 gms), 4. fruit (mixed, dried) (Ilb or 500 gms),
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5. lemon ( I regular) (or vanilla flavouring) (I small jar) 6. sugar (nice and brown)( at least 250 gms) 7. Brandy (for preservation) Notes: - Preservative powder is optional in Cake, but it is used by most Bakers to extend the shelf life of the cake. It is best used for wedding and birthday cakes that needs to be preserved or coated with icing. The alcohol (brandy) also helps to keep the cake from going stale. - Browning is used for making dark brown cakes - Use fruits only if you want to make fruit cakes. - 1 tablespoonful of Plain Flour is approximately 9 grams - 1 tablespoon of sugar is approximately 13 grams - I used oldenburger butter, you can get it in all big supermarkets, like Park n Shop, at the fridge section.

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Locate equipment Oven, oven gloves, cake tin (ideally 8 inch with a detachable bottom), greaseproof paper (about 0.5 sq meter), mixing bowls (large and small), stout fork or spoon (or food mixer) kitchen scales.

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Now wash your hands (and do this often)

Take butter out of fridge to soften (or soften gently in microwave)

Set oven to preheat to 150 centigrade

Smear with your fingers or with the wrapping paper for the butter a thin layer of softened butter around inside edges of cake tin (sides and bottom).

Cut off about 50--60 cms of greaseproof paper. Place detachable cake tin bottom on paper as a template and cut round. Stick to greased side of cake tin bottom. Cut suitable strips to stick to greased sides, covering the whole side of the tin, and sticking up over the top for about 2 or 3 cms (make strips as long as possible -- so two should do it to get all the way round the tin--overlap is OK)

Weigh out your ingredients either as you need them or before proceeding further.
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MIX AND BLEND

Either prepare mix 1 first or mix 2. You must prepare BOTH before proceeding to Mix 3 For mix 1: Cut up your margerine into smallish slices or cubes and place in a large bowl. Add the sugar, Food-process or mix very thoroughly with a fork or spoon until really smooth and creamy. Keep going until it is really smooth. You will need a lot of energy if preparing by hand.

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Self-assessment: (The mixture should be slightly gritty, evenly coloured, and with a creamy, 'peaky' texture like a thick milk shake or well mixed filler.)

For mix 2: Weigh out and place the flour in a smaller bowl, and then add the fruit (not all at once). Get your hands in and rub the fruit and the flour between your fingers until each bit of mixed fruit is separate and nicely covered in flour. Remove any nasty bits.

Self-assessment: (The fruit should be evenly dispersed throughout the flour, with no clusters or lumps. All the fruit should have a covering of flour.)

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For mix 3: Add the fruit and flour (Mix 2) to the butter and sugar (Mix 1), with added eggs. Do this slowly and carefully --eg. break an egg into the creamy mix 1 and add about a quarter of mix 2. Combine it all carefully and thoroughly with a spoon or fork. Add the grated peel and a small spoonful of vanilla essence, then brandy for preservation. If you have a powerful food processor, use that with the blending attachment -- less powerful ones can fail with such heavy mixtures. Break another egg, add another quarter of mix 2 and combine it all thoroughly.Try to get air into the mixture. Keep going until all 4 eggs and all of mix 2 is absorbed into one gloriously sticky and tasty cake mix.

Self -assessment : (Mix 3 should be evenly fruited (say 3 or 4 pieces of fruit per cubic centimetre), with no discernible bits of flour, and 'peaky' (ie if you raise the surface with a spoon, you should be able to leave a little peak of mixture standing up. If it feels too stiff, carefully add some milk a little at a time.)

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COOKING

Transfer Mix 3 to the lined cake tin. Use a spoon and press the mixture gently into the tin so you fill it up smoothly. Flatten off the top of the mixture.

Wait until the oven is preheated to 150, then place the filled tin in the oven -- on the middle shelf if in any doubt.

Be prepared to examine the cake after one hour. The intervening hour is a good time to wash and clean up.

To examine: Remove the cake tin (using oven gloves) and place it on a heatproof surface away from draughts. Insert a knife or knitting needle into the centre of the cake. If the implement comes out clean (ie with no cake mixture adhering to it), the cake is baked. If there is mixture adhering to the knife or needle, replace the cake for more
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cooking. Check again after 20 minutes, then at 10 minute intervals. It should probably not take longer than 1hr and 40 minutes, but this depends on the cooking characteristics of the oven.

Self-assessment: (a baked cake should feel firm when pressed, pass the inserted needle or knife test, smell pleasant and not burnt, and look an even pale brown colour. There may be some rising and cracking in the centre.)

Carefully and slowly push the cake up out of the tin, in its greasproof paper wrapping, making sure no hot metal comes into contact with your bare flesh. Turning the tin on its side, or all the way over, can help. Hold the whole thing over, or even rest on, a clean surface in case you do drop the cake.

Place the cake on a wire grid (eg a grill pan) to cool. After a few minutes, peel off the greaseproof paper from the sides.

Allow to cool and then test for taste.
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Self-assessment: (your cake will have achieved a place inside the normal range of edibility if you find it pleasant to eat)

ADVANCED OPTIONS You can vary the texture of the cake in several ways: Vary the flavours --eg try cinammon instead of (or as well as) vanilla Vary the mixture of flour -- try 5 oz of self-raising and 5 oz of plain, then 8 of one and 2 of the other, and so on. Try wholemeal flour. Try all plain flour and add baking powder (about one teaspoonful?). Cook for less time for a moister cake. Or add another egg or some more milk. Add another sheet of greaseproof paper lining to the cake tin to avoid a crust effect on the cake.
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Vary the sugar content -- different types of sugar, for example.

EQUIPMENT Having the right equipment on hand is essential to baking perfect cakes. With a couple of exceptions, baking equipment is not terribly expensive. Better-quality pans and other tools should last forever. If you are interested in baking cakes, you will want to have the following: Oven: is a thermally insulated chamber used for the heatin or baking Oven glove: is an insulated glove or mitten usually worn in the kitchen to easily protect the wearer's hand from hot objects such as ovens, stoves, cookware, etc. Cake tins: are objects that are used to bake cakes. Unlike the pie and pie dish, the cake does not remain in the tin when cooked, so these can be re-used immediately. Greaseproof paper: is paper that is impermeable to oil or grease and is normally used in cooking or food packaging. Mixing Bowl: is a bowl used for mixing of ingredients.

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Kitchen scales: If you’re a keen cook, weighing scales will be one of your most important pieces of kitchen kit, especially if you love to bake where accuracy is essential for good results. Stout fork or spoon: is used in mixing the recipe

DEFINITION OF TERMS Self-raising floor: This is low-protein, low-gluten white or wholemeal flour with a raising agent mixed in. The most usual raising agent added is baking powder, but some brands also use bicarbonate of soda or other agents. wholemeal flour: is a powdery substance, a basic food ingredient, derived by grinding or mashing the whole grain of wheat, also known as the wheatberry. Baking powder: is a dry chemical leavening agent, a mixture of a carbonate or bicarbonate and a weak acid, and is used for increasing the volume and lightening the texture of baked goods.

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CONCLUSION I hope that this page was user friendly for all ages and all types of people who want to bake a fruit cake. Simply follow the previous pages and you will have a beautiful and delicious cake to eat and share with your friends. It is fun to make these cakes. It is very simple and should not take more than an hour to get everything together, make the cake and finish the cake to cool. Please enjoy what you have learned and make great cakes!

REFERENCE

^ Irma von Starkloff Rombauer; Marion Rombauer Becker (1975). Joy of cooking. Simon and Schuster. pp. 547–. ISBN 978-0-02-604570-4.

^ Cake finishes. YouTube. Retrieved 23 December 2011. ^ Park, Michael (2013). "A History of the Cake Mix, the Invention That Redefined 'Baking'". bonappetit.com. Bon Appétit.

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^ Castella, Krystina (2010). A World of Cake: 150 Recipes for Sweet Traditions From Cultures Around the World, pp. 6–7. ISBN 978-1-60342-576-6.

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