A couple of years back, I had no experience in baking cakes or cooking at all! Since I was living with my parents - I had nothing to worry about. It all changed when I was accepted to the university. There were no parents to help me out!
In the first couple of months I started losing weight pretty fast - that's because I was simply too lazy to cook something (I was studying IT, and we all know how lazy those "computer geeks" can be).
One "happy" day my girlfriend ask me to visit her at her parents house. They have this thing when one day in a year they invite some guests, and all of the guests have to bring something they made. I was told by my girlfriend that I should bring a cake, because no one had brought one before.
At first, I though I would buy something from the catering store nearby, but I changed my mind when I saw how expensive those cakes were. I thought to myself - it can't be that hard! So I started searching for homemade cake recipes. I found one pretty easy orange cake recipe and decided to give it a try.
I made the batter exactly as it was written in the recipe. Got it into the cake tin and put it into oven. However, since I've been working on one of my projects while it was baking, I totally forgot about the cake! After I remembered about it, I run to the kitchen and saw smokes all over the place. It was so embarrassing to throw it out with two girls watching how I failed with my cake (we shared the same kitchen in the dorm) so that I thought I would never make anything on my own again.
Thanks to my girlfriend, I didn't give up. I found another source of easy cake recipes and decided to make a chocolate cake. This time I didn't forget about it, and it turned out to be really tasty. My girlfriends parents really loved it!
Since then, I started baking cakes for my friends at least once a week. Right now, I feel like I have tons of experience, so I will share some tips to help you if you're a beginner.
- To keep the filling in place, make sure to sprinkle layers with confectioners sugar
- People don't like it when cake sticks to the serving platter - once again, you can use confectioners sugar to dust the platter.
- To keep cake fresh longer, put a fresh apple cut in half in the box of the cake.
- To prevent cake from crumbling while frosting - freeze the layers in the cake pans for about one hour.
- Don't ever try to take the cake out of the pan if it's still hot!
- You can use dental floss to cut the cake into even slices
- If you're baking fruit cake - spray cake tin with vegetable oil
Hopefully my tips will help you! Good luck!