Cakes, bother them

[adaeze]

Oh wise and talented flist,

Why is it that *every single time* I attempt to bake a cake, by any variation of the "cream butter & sugar, then add eggs" method, the wretched mixture always always always curdles?  I did *everything* by the book this time, eggs out of the fridge last night to be sure they'd be room temperature, butter & sugar creamed till they were as light as a feather made from hydrogen, and as fluffy as Exceptionally Cute.  And yet still, at the first hint of egg, it curdled.

I know it's not the world's greatest disaster, and I know the Christmas cake will taste just the same.  But it's the principle of the thing - just once in my life, I want to make a non-curdled cake!

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Cakes are perverse and evil things. I do absolutely everything by the book, and follow every tip and instruction given by all the wise cake-makers of yore, and mine always end up awful. Pellinor guesses the measurements, throws the ingredients together casually with his eyes shut, bakes it for a totally random length of time, breaks every single cake-making rule ever written, and produces wonderful, moist, amazing cakes.

My only explanation is that cake mixture senses fear.

[segh.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't keep your eggs in the fridge in the first place - it does them no good.
I'm not quite in the Pellinor class - I do measure - but apart from that I just throw it all together.
Basic one-bowl sandwich: 4 oz each of flour, marg or butter and sugar, one or two eggs depending on size, hit madly with electric whisk, put in oven at 4 or 5 - depending on what else is cooking. If I'm feeling poor it's 6 oz flour. Or 5 and one of cocoa.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Leave the butter to go soft for a few hours (or microwave it if you have less organisation - use short bursts and check it frequently, as if you zap it really hard you get really interesting melt patterns but it makes the later stages a bit more awkward).

Cream the butter and sugar together as hard as you can. The softer the butter the easier - although if you melt the butter it'll go sloppy which makes it hard to judge the consistency of the mixture later. Taste it (mmmm....). Have another bit so you can crunch the sugar.

Put a bit of the flour on top of the butter, probably a couple of ounces as that's an egg's worth, and break an egg over it. Mix that lot up thoroughly. Repeat until you've used all the flour and all the eggs. Taste it, remember all those raw egg salmonella scares, ignore them, and have another bit as it's so nice :-)

See how thick the mixture is, and probably add a bit of milk to loosen it up. Chuck in spices and fruit if it's that sort of cake (normally a microwave faux-spotted dick, for me). Check that the taste hasn't magically disappeared.

Realise that you've forgotten to do the cake tins - I use a butter paper to grease them, then sprinkle a little flour over the base and jiggle the tins while drumming my fingers on them to get an even spread. Discard the excess, and don't worry about the bare patch that you missed with the butter paper.

Dump mixture in and cook with the oven turned up to about *there*, until it's probably done (ie it's coming away from the sides), then leave a couple of minutes longer to be on the safe side. Lick out the bowl and start making the icing. Have a cup of coffee to wash away the taste of cake mixture.

Alternative cooking technique if it's destined for pudding rather than cake: put in a mcrowaveable dish and cook on high for about 5 minutes, or until there are no soggy bits left on the top.

[emperor]

Are you using an electric whisk?[1] I find they make this sort of thing easier. I use my eggs straight out of the fridge, though, which is probably EBW.

[1] I typod this as whisky, which is probably bad for 10am.

[emperor]

I keep my eggs in the fridge, as they last much longer that way!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

And me, I can't tell the difference (fridge/nonfridge) when I boil them, let alone in a cake.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much what I do, only I don't usually bother softening the butter, if it was in the fridge I just cut it up small and pound it with a fork.

Adding the flour and egg at the same time solves the curdling for me. Oh, and lots of milk, I reckon recipes almost always tell you to not use anything like enough liquid, if you follow their instructions the cake gets rather heavy.

If you have a big sharp knife, enjoy the wielding of same, and are ridiculously lazy, you can also mostly skip the greasing of the cake tins and basically carve the cake off the tin at the end.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... it's occurred to me that another thing I sometimes do is beat the egg up in the milk then add them together to a big pile of everything else. Though I can't say I do that consistently.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

knife trick only really works if you have those tins with removable bases. Which are very helpful :-)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

You can get away with it if you are using a bread tin too, as long as the cake is reasonably coherent and not too crumbly. But yes, definitely better with the removable bases!

[segh.livejournal.com]

I just did a little light research: the consensus seems to be that they do last longer - that wouldn't worry me, as we get through a dozen or so eggs a week and buy them as needed. But I do think it spoils the flavour.
Delia doesn't fridge hers. That's probably the first time I've ever knowingly alluded to Delia, except in the context of Kit and the Widow.

[miss-t-ide.livejournal.com]

I make sure my butter is soft (but not melted) before I start. If it's a cold day (or I didn't get the butter out of the fridge in time) then I may warm the bowl and the beaters. But I've never really had a problem with curdling (sorry), so I'm not sure exactly what it is that I do that prevents it.

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

I'm probably not the right person to ask/answer, because of recent times, I just simply do no "do" baking.

But...none of the simple cakes I made before such times (including fruit/Christmas cake type) ever curdled. But nor do I recall them ever having cream in them so maybe that is why. Maybe you need to give up on that sort of recipe, there are lots of other cake recipes out there.

How are you creaming it? If by hand, try a really good mixer; if a mixer is the problem, try by hand.

And of course, if it doesn't matter tastewise, it doesn't matter period, really, does it so maybe it's a question that doesn't need answering.

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

Reading the rest (now why didn't I do that first) I also recall only ever adding egg last (after flour) so that's probably your answer, whatever the recipe says.

[adaese.livejournal.com]

This makes a lot of sense. It also explains why my mother, in every other way an excellent cook, simply cannot make gravy.

[adaese.livejournal.com]

Yes (to whisk). It did occur to me that since the whole point of the cake mix is to keep the fruit together, and since the whole point of the fruit is to hold the brandy in place, I could just skip the whole cake and fruit stage, and just have brandy.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

I stopped fridging mine when my friend Apples, the ex-submarine chef, said he never fridged his and they lasted for months on the submarine. I just check them for floating before using them after the use by date.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I would even *notice* my batter curdling, or I would assume it is supposed to do that. So no help, really! But all my cakes have turned out yummy.