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Basic Baking Techniques

Appears in
The Cook's Companion: A step-by-step guide to cooking skills including original recipes

By Josceline Dimbleby

Published 1991

  • About
To be praised as a good cake baker is perhaps one of the great culinary accolades, and to achieve this goal you are best armed with basic cake chemistry.
Heat has a specific effect on liquids, flours, eggs, fats and sugars, which also react with each other during baking. Too low a heat and the cake will not cook thoroughly in the centre, producing a solid, cloying mass. Too high a temperature cooks the cake’s outside quickly, causing a hard crisp exterior that forces any uncooked middle mixture to push up and erupt in a peaked and cracked appearance. Yet light, whisked sponges, for example, need quite a high heat to prevent them from becoming as flat as biscuits.

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