Tricks and Tips for cookies and cakes

Tricks and Tips
Instead of lining your cake tin with wax paper, you can also grease you cake tin with ordinary vegetable oil and dust with flour before you pour in your cake mixture for baking. This will enable your cake to be easily taken out after the cake is done.

COOKIES
- The most suitable flours for producing dried cookies are low protein flours.
- The ideal baking temperature for cookies is dependent upon the sugar level. The standard is at 160°C for 20 minutes.
- Apart from flour, other important components in baking cookies are icing sugar and margarine.
- Dose of baking powder and bicarbonate should exceed 0.3%-0.4% the total weight of used flour.
- To make egg yolk smoother during layering, mix it with a little salt water.
- When adding peanuts into the dough, heat them up first in a pan.
- To prevent chocolate chips from easily melting, refrigerate them for at least an hour minutes before using. Maintain the oven temperature at 170°C.

Why do some cookies crumble easily?
Because too much butter and/or eggs are used.

Why do some cookies turn soggy, even wet?
Because it’s too thick, oven temperature too high, or use of the wrong type of flour.

Why do some cookies become oily after baking?
Try not to polish the baking tray with too much butter before baking.

Why do cookie molds or patterns crumble from the widening of cookie shape?
Because margarine and sugar are mixed for too long or from lack of flour. Sugar and margarine should only be stirred, not blended.

CAKE:
- To prevent burning, avoid storing the baking tray too close to fire source. Also try not to set the oven temperature too high.
- Cover the base of the baking tray with bread paper sprinkled with flour (without margarine), because it will thicken the paper and make it easier to peel off.
- Thin cakes are best baked at a higher oven temperature (± 200°C), while thicker cakes will need a temperature of  180°C.
- Wrap cake with aluminum foil and store in freezer, and it will stay edible for more than five weeks.
- Make sure the oven is preheated before baking and that water is already boiled properly before steaming.
- Sieve chocolate powder together with wheat flour to produce a smoother and less grainy mixture.
- To maximize cake’s volume, liquid food coloring has to be inserted the first time dough is stirred.
- Cool off liquid butter before adding it to dough to prevent the cake’s texture becoming rough.
- When adding butter cream, ensure that cake is already cooled off for two hours to prevent it from melting.
- Poundcake is the most suitable dough for making a fruitcake.
- Don’t use fruits with high water/slime content because it will make it difficult to preserve.
- When using broiler chicken eggs, making sure they’re not more than three days old. If eggs have become to thin, try adding cake emulsifier.
- Do not use eggs that have just been taken out of the fridge, because they will not capture air when stirred.

Why is it so hard to make muffins bloom?
It requires at least 25 minutes at 200°C oven temperature to bake a muffin properly. If not, muffins will not bloom.

Why do roll cakes often crumble and can’t be rolled properly?
Because of not high enough oven temperature and too much baking time. Roll cakes usually require 12 minutes of baking at 220°C.

Why do cake fillings turn hollow or rough?
Too much egg white or too little margarine.

What causes thick clods in cakes?
Too much use of margarine, too much or uneven stirring.

Why is the cake’s middle layer not as well-baked as its exterior?
Oven temperature is too high.

Why is cake hard and dry?
Because of not enough use of sugar, margarine and eggs. Or from too much baking powder. On the other hand, cake can be too runny also from lack of emulsifier or flour, or from too much egg white.

Which wheat flours are suitable for making cakes?
Those with low protein, or those made from mixing medium-protein flour with maizena flour.

What’s the difference between chiffon cake, pound cake and sponge cake?
Chiffon cake is made by mixing egg yolk, oil, flour and baking powder, whereby egg white is first mixed and braised with sugar before other ingredients are added. Pound cake is a cake that has the same ratio of egg, sugar and flour, which weighs about one pound each – about 450 g. Sponge cake is made by braising eggs with sugar, followed by wheat flour and lastly margarine or butter.

Why does cake surface become grooved?
Not enough wheat flour in the dough, or vice versa.

Why does cake surface crack?
Too much sugar and wheat flour or because the wrong type of flour is used. Other causes include baking tray being too small or not high enough oven temperature.