Birthday Cakes: 50 Traditional and Themed Cakes for Fun and Festive Birthdays
By Janne Jansen
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About this ebook
Learn to create delicious birthday cakes for small and large celebrations with this colorful book. Featuring fifty easy-to-follow recipes, Birthday Cakes will give you tips on how to bake the perfect basic cake and a plethora of ideas on how to decorate it to wow your guests.
Janne Jensen presents recipes for delicious cakes like raspberry meringue, rainbow cake, sponge cake with strawberries, fudge cream cake, cheesecake, cake pop cake, and banana cake, and fun themes like:
- Hello Kitty
- Pirates
- Purses
- Lady bugs and bees
- Barbies
- Presents
- And many more!
With advice on using baking equipment properly, mixing ingredients, icing and frosting, and making your own cake decorations, Jensen believes that how a cake tastes is just as important as how it looks, and this book makes sure your birthday cake will turn out beautifully in both respects.
Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Good Books and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of cookbooks, including books on juicing, grilling, baking, frying, home brewing and winemaking, slow cookers, and cast iron cooking. We’ve been successful with books on gluten-free cooking, vegetarian and vegan cooking, paleo, raw foods, and more. Our list includes French cooking, Swedish cooking, Austrian and German cooking, Cajun cooking, as well as books on jerky, canning and preserving, peanut butter, meatballs, oil and vinegar, bone broth, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
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Birthday Cakes - Janne Jansen
HELPFUL TIPS
FOR BAKING
GENERAL TIPS
It’s nice to have a list of good tips that make your baking, and the final product, a success. Here are my best tips for baking cakes.
♥ All the ingredients should be room temperature before you begin to bake. Take them out of the refrigerator about an hour before you begin baking.
♥ Have all your ingredients and tools ready at hand before you start.
♥ Read the recipes carefully, and don’t be sloppy with measurements. Be precise.
♥ Preheat the oven. It takes about 15 minutes before it gets hot.
♥ Remember to grease your pans well. Line your pans with parchment paper, so you can avoid ending up with a cake that won’t let go of its pan when you’re ready to take it out.
♥ Use oven shelves when you bake cakes in pans. Baking sheets can result in poor circulation in the oven.
♥ Don’t open the oven door until at least half of the baking time has elapsed. That way, you’ll avoid having your cake collapse.
♥ Cover the pan with a bit of parchment paper if the cake begins to darken before it’s finished baking.
♥ Use a skewer to check if the cake is done. Push it all the way into the cake, in the middle. If it comes out clean, the cake is done. You can also see that the cake is ready when it begins to let go of the edges of the pan.
♥ Remember that baking times are only guidelines. The exact time varies from oven to oven, and based on the size of the baking pan.
♥ If you want to avoid having your cake develop a peak in the center, you can do this: wet a small towel and wrap it around the pan. Make sure the towel doesn’t dry out while the cake is baking. The cake will take somewhat longer to bake, but you’re guaranteed a cake with a flat top. You’ll also avoid the edges being done before the rest of the cake, which causes them to harden before the whole cake is done. The cake will, in other words, bake more evenly.
♥ Check your baking powder. Even if it hasn’t expired, it doesn’t always work as well once the package has been open for a few months.
♥ If the cake collapses or sinks in the middle, the cause might be too much leavening, too small a pan, too short a baking time, too cold an oven, or a cold air from an opened oven door while baking.
♥ If the surface of the cake is cracked, the cause might be too much leavening, too much batter in the pan, batter that’s too dry or too wet, or too high an oven temperature.
♥ If your egg whites don’t stiffen up, the cause might be a whisk that’s not clean, eggs that are too old, eggs that are too cold, or egg whites and yolks that were poorly separated.
♥ When cooking meringue, remember that too high an oven temperature can give you a burned cake, sugar seeping out of the meringue, or meringue that’s soggy in the middle.
♥ If your sponge cake won’t rise, the cause might be that you haven’t beaten the egg mixture to the right stiffness. Remember to beat it for at least ten minutes—it should be properly stiff. It’s also important to place the cake in the right part of the oven. Sponge cake batter that sits out too long on the counter loses a lot of its airiness.
♥ White chocolate can burn, so remember that it doesn’t tolerate as much heat as regular chocolate.
♥ Bake cakes layer by layer. That’ll give you a perfect, moist cake. If you’re going to bake a three-layer cake, distribute the batter in three pans of the same size, then bake. Remember, though, that not all batters can stand to wait around. Sponge cake, for example, is one kind of batter that needs to go straight into the oven.
♥ Let cakes cool in their pans for about ten minutes after they’re done, before turning them out and onto a rack.
♥ Before slicing a cake into layers, let it cool, pack it in plastic, and put it in the freezer for about thirty minutes. This prevents the cake from crumbling as you cut it.
♥ When covering a cake with a crème, start with a thin layer around the whole cake, then put it in the refrigerator for about thirty minutes, until the crème firms up (not necessary with whipped cream cakes and sponge cakes). Then cover the cake with a second layer. That stops crumbs from getting into the crème. The first layer holds them in place.
♥ To achieve a nice, smooth surface on a cake, hold the spatula under warm running water, dry it off, and then draw it across the cake. Remove any excess crème that came off on the spatula. Repeat the process until you’ve gone over the whole cake.
♥ Don’t put too much crème in a piping bag when applying it to a cake. It could melt from the warmth of your hands. It’s best to fill the piping bag several times.
EQUIPMENT
I recommend the following equipment for easy and successful work in the kitchen.
♥ Stand mixer
♥ Hand mixer
♥ Springform pan
♥ Two round pans, 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter
♥ Molds and cake pans in different styles (Wonder Mold, sports balls, squares, and daisy pans are used in this book)
♥ Kitchen scale
♥ Deciliter measuring cup
♥ Measuring spoons, for precise measurements
♥ Cooling rack
♥ Mixing bowls
♥ Colander
♥ Ruler/measuring tape
♥ Scissors
♥ Cake-decorating accessories
♥ Spatula
♥ Dough scraper
♥ Small, sharp knife, without serrations
♥ Cutting wheel (I use a small one for decorations, and a pizza wheel to cut around the edges when making cake coverings)
♥ Plastic rolling pin with rubber-size rings, for a smooth surface
♥ Piping bags and tips, and a few connectors, which makes it easier to change tips
♥ Rotating tray
♥ Cake smoother
♥ Various shape cutters
♥ Some modeling tools
♥ A sugar gun (a device that presses out fondants in various sizes and shapes)
♥ Paintbrushes, to paint and attach decorations on cakes
♥ Parchment paper
♥ Color pastes and powders
♥ Cardboard cake stand, for tiered cakes
♥ Wooden/plastic sticks, for tiered cakes
♥ Sugar thermometer (you can buy one in a hobby shop or cake store)
♥ Ladles, whisks, spatulas, etc.
DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES
How to make cake tops
When rolling out cake coverings, I recommend using a plastic mat and a plastic rolling pin. You’ll find that the rolling goes much more smoothly this way. You can