Butter Half Cake

1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup butter flavored Crisco
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk, yogurt, or sour cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/8 teaspoon mace (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees. Butter and flour one half-size bundt cake pan or one bread loaf or large brownie pan.

Cream butter, Crisco, and gradually add the sugar, creaming until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. Add flour mixture alternately with milk and flavorings to creamed mixture, beating after each addition until smooth and light. Pour batter into cake pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool in pan 10 minutes, remove and finish cooling on rack.

Frost when cool with your favorite frosting or drizzle with confectioner's icing and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

Cake Decorating

Buttercream swirls are piped onto the sides of cake

Cake decorating is one of the sugar arts that uses icing and other edible decorative elements to make otherwise plain cakes more visually interesting. Alternatively, cakes can be molded and sculpted to resemble three-dimensional persons, places and things.

In many areas of the world, decorated cakes are often the focal point of a special celebration such as a birthday, graduation, bridal shower, wedding, or anniversary.

The art of cake decorating dates back to mid-17th century in Europe and has since flourished in many regions and countries, including Northwestern Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and South America.

Cake decorating can be a hobby or a job.

"Cake in White Satin" is a beautiful example of why fondant is such a popular wedding cake choice.

Styles of cake decorating

Decorating a cake usually involves covering a cake with some form of icing and then using decorative sugars, candies, chocolate or icing decorations to embellish the cake. But it can also be as simple as sprinkling a fine coat of icing sugar or drizzling a glossy blanket of glaze over the top of a cake. Icing decorations can be made by either piping icing flowers and decorative borders or by molding gum paste, fondant, or marzipan flowers and figures.

The precursor to most styles of cake decorating is the European style, which entails covering a cake with a smooth layer of icing, either royal icing or rolled fondant, and then using royal icing to pipe flowers, borders and decorative stringwork to adorn the cake. Traditionally, the wedding cake is a graduated multi-tiered cake stacked in Victorian style or separated by pillars with flowers and other decorations applied to each tier.

The Lambeth Method uses intricate dimensional overpiping of borders on a fondant covered cake. Scrolls, scallops and stringwork are piped, one layer of icing on top of another, until a very dimensional effect is achieved.

The Australian Method also uses intricate royal icing piping over fondant-covered cakes, but then adds delicate lacework and detailed extension and curtain work.

The Wilton Method uses buttercream icing to both cover the cake and then pipe flowers and decorative borders. Buttercream, although much tastier than either royal icing or rolled fondant, is much less refined making for heavier and less intricate decorations. The Wilton course in cake decorating covers The Basics (Level I), Assorted Flowers & More (Level II), and Rolled Fondant & Tiered Cakes (Level III). Wilton has also popularized the quick and easy approach to cake decorating where a cake is baked in a shaped pan and then colored buttercream icing is piped to color in the design, one star at a time.

Wedding cake styles have evolved over the years from the traditional white iced cake with icing flowers and a plastic groom and bride on top to highly artistic designs that mirror the tastes and style of the wedding couple.

Cake decorators like Jay Ellis, owner of Cakes by Jay in New York, report that current trends call for more sugar detailing and fresh flowers and prices per slice range from $4 for the inexpensive to the average $7 to $10 per slice.

Novelty cakes depicting a favorite hobby, sport, pet or object are in high demand when it comes to making a groom’s cake, retirement, or birthday cake.

Flour

An ingredient used in many foods, flour is a fine powder made by grinding cereals or other edible starchy plant seeds suitable for grinding. It is most commonly made from wheat—the word "flour" used without qualification implies wheatflour—but also maize (now called corn in many parts of the Western Hemisphere), rye, barley, and rice, amongst many other grasses and non-grain plants (including buckwheat, grain amaranths and many Australian species of acacia). Ground legumes and nuts, such as soy, peanuts, almonds, and other tree nuts, are also called flours. The same substances ground more coarsely are called "meal" instead of "flour".

Flour is the key ingredient of bread, which is the staple food in most countries, and therefore the availability of adequate supplies of flour has often been a major economic and political issue.

Flour always contains a high proportion of starches, which are complex carbohydrates also known as polysaccharides.

Wheat flour is one of the most important foods in European and American culture, and is the defining ingredient in most types of breads and pastries. Regulations in many countries require that wheat flour be enriched to replace nutrients lost in the production of refined flour.

Wheat flour contains proteins called gluten. When dough made with wheat flour is kneaded, the gluten molecules cross-link to form a sub-microscopic network that gives the dough an elastic structure. This allows the retention of gas bubbles in an intact structure, resulting in an aerated final product with a soft texture, desirable for breads, cakes and the like.

Some people suffer from an intolerance to gluten known as coeliac or celiac disease. Increased awareness of this disorder, as well as a rising belief in the benefits of a gluten-free diet for persons suffering certain other conditions, has led to an increased demand for bread, pasta, and other products made with flours that do not contain gluten.

There are some exceptions; for instance, in the UK, cornflour is the white, powdered starch of the maize grain, not ground maize.

Wheat flour

Much more wheat flour is produced than any other flour.

Wheat varieties are called "clean" "white" or "brown" if they will, or are going to be or not to be aloud to have high gluten content, and "soft" or "weak flour" if gluten content is low. Hard flour, or "bread" flour, is high in gluten, with a certain toughness that holds its shape well once baked. Soft flour is comparatively low in gluten and so results in a finer texture. Soft flour is usually divided into cake flour, which is the lowest in gluten, and pastry flour, which has slightly more gluten than cake flour.

In terms of the parts of the grain (the grass fruit) used in flour—the endosperm or starchy part, the germ or protein part, and the bran or fibre part—there are three general types of flour. White flour is made from the endosperm only. Whole grain or Wholemeal flour is made from the entire grain including bran, endosperm, and germ. A germ flour is made from the endosperm and germ, excluding the bran.

All-purpose or plain flour
This flour is a blended wheat flour with an intermediate gluten level which is marketed as an acceptable compromise for most household baking needs.

Bleached flour
Treated with flour bleaching agents to whiten it (freshly milled flour is yellowish) and to give it more gluten-producing potential. Oxidizing agents are usually employed, most commonly organic peroxides like acetone peroxide or benzoyl peroxide, nitrogen dioxide, or chlorine. A similar effect can be achieved by letting the flour slowly oxidize with oxygen in the air ("natural aging") for approximately 10 days; however, this process is more expensive due to the time required.

Bromated flour
This is a flour with a maturing agent added. The agent's role is to help with developing gluten, a role similar to the flour bleaching agents. Bromate is usually used. Other choices are phosphates, ascorbic acid, and malted barley. Bromated flour has been banned in much of the world, but remains available in the United States.

Cake flour
This is a finely milled flour made from soft wheat. It has very low gluten content, making it suitable for soft-textured cakes and cookies. The higher gluten content of other flours would make the cakes tough.

Graham flour
This is a special type of whole-wheat flour. The endosperm is finely ground, as in white flour, while the bran and germ are coarsely ground. Graham flour is uncommon outside of the USA and the cities of Romania. It is the basis of true graham crackers. Many graham crackers on the market are actually imitation grahams because they do not contain graham flour or even whole-wheat flour.

Pastry flour or cookie flour or cracker flour
This flour has slightly higher gluten content than cake flour, but lower than all-purpose flour. It is suitable for fine, light-textured pastries.

Self-rising or self-raising flour
This is "white" wheat flour or wholemeal flour that is sold premixed with chemical leavening agents. It was invented by Henry Jones. It can also be substituted by Maida when cooking under the Indian Cuisine. Typical ratios are:

U.S. customary:

* one cup flour
* 1 to 1½ teaspoon baking powder
* a pinch to ½ teaspoon salt

Metric:

* 100 g flour
* 3 g baking powder
* 1 g or less salt

Durum or semolina flour
This flour is made of durum wheat. It has the highest protein content, and it is an important component of nearly all noodles and pastas. It is also commonly used to make Indian flatbreads.

In Britain, many flours go by names different than those from America. Some American flours and British equivalents include:

* Cake and pastry flour = soft flour
* All-purpose flour = plain flour
* Bread flour = strong flour, hard flour
* Self-rising flour = self-raising flour
* Whole-wheat flour = wholemeal flour

wheat flour

Other flours

• Corn (maize) flour is popular in the Southern and Southwestern US and in Mexico. Coarse whole-grain corn flour is usually called corn meal. Corn meal that has been bleached with lye is called masa harina (see masa) and is used to make tortillas and tamales in Mexican cooking. Corn flour should never be confused with cornstarch, which is known as "cornflour" in British English.
• Rye flour is used to bake the traditional sourdough breads of Germany and Scandinavia. Most rye breads use a mix of rye and wheat flours because rye has a low gluten content. Pumpernickel bread is usually made exclusively of rye, and contains a mixture of rye flour and rye meal.
• Rice flour is of great importance in Southeast Asian cuisine. Also edible rice paper can be made from it. Most rice flour is made from white rice, thus is essentially a pure starch, but whole-grain brown rice flour is commercially available.
• Noodle flour is special blend of flour used for the making of Asian style noodles.
• Buckwheat flour is used as an ingredient in many pancakes in the United States. In Japan, it is used to make a popular noodle called Soba. In Russia, buckwheat flour is added to the batter for pancakes called blinis which are frequently eaten with caviar. Buckwheat flour is also used to make Breton crêpes called galettes.
• Chestnut flour is popular in Corsica, the Périgord and Lunigiana. In Corsica, it is used to cook the local variety of polenta. In Italy, it is mainly used for desserts.
• Chickpea flour (also known as gram flour or besan) is of great importance in Indian cuisine, and in Italy, where it is used for the Ligurian farinata.
• Teff flour is made from the grain teff, and is of considerable importance in eastern Africa (particularly around the horn of Africa). Notably, it is the chief ingredient in the bread injera, an important component of Ethiopian cuisine.
• Atta flour is a wheat flour which is important in Indian cuisine, used for a range of breads such as roti and chapati.
• Tang flour (not to be confused with the powdered beverage Tang) or wheat starch is a type of wheat flour used primarily in Chinese cooking for making the outer layer of dumplings and buns. It is also used in Vietnamese cuisine, where it is called bột lọc trong.
• Glutinous rice flour or sticky rice flour, used in east and southeast Asian cuisines for making tangyuan etc.
• Peasemeal or pea flour is a flour produced from roasted and pulverized yellow field peas.
• Bean flour is a flour produced from pulverized dried or ripe beans.
• Potato flour is obtained by grinding the tubers to a pulp and removing the fibre by water-washings. The dried product consists chiefly of starch, but also contains some protein. Potato flour is used as a thickening agent. When heated to boiling, food added with a suspension of potato flour in water thickens quickly. Because the flour is made from neither grain nor legume, it is used as substitute for wheat flour in cooking by Jews during Passover, when grains are not eaten.
• Chuño flour made from dried potatoes in various countries of South America.
• Amaranth flour is a flour produced from ground Amaranth grain. It was commonly used in pre-Columbian meso-American cuisine. It is becoming more and more available in speciality food shops.
• Nut flours are ground from oily nuts--most commonly almonds and hazelnuts--and are used instead of or in addition to wheat flour to produce more dry and flavorful pastries and cakes. Cakes made with nut flours are usually called tortes and most originated in Central Europe, in countries such as Hungary and Austria.

Flour can also be made from buckwheat, soy beans, arrowroot, taro, cattails, acorns, peas, beans, and other non-grain foodstuffs.

Cake

Cake is a form of food that is usually sweet and often baked. Cakes normally combine some kind of flour, a sweetening agent (commonly sugar), a binding agent (generally egg, though gluten or starch are often used by vegetarians and vegans), fats (usually butter, shortening, or margarine, although a fruit purée such as applesauce is sometimes substituted to avoid using fat), a liquid (milk, water or fruit juice), flavors and some form of leavening agent (such as yeast or baking powder), though many cakes lack these ingredients and instead rely on air bubbles in the dough to expand and cause the cake to rise. Cake is often frosted with buttercream or marzipan, and finished with piped borders and crystallized frui.

Cake is often the dessert of choice for meals at ceremonial occasions, particularly weddings, anniversaries and birthdays. There are literally millions of cake recipes (some are bread-like and some rich and elaborate) and many are centuries old. Cake making is no longer a complicated procedure; while at one time considerable labor went into cake making (particularly the whisking of egg foams), baking equipment and directions have been so perfected and simplified that even the amateur cook may easily become an expert baker.

A piece of chocolate cake.

Cakes are broadly divided into several categories, based primarily on ingredients and cooking techniques.

1. Yeast cakes are the oldest, and are very similar to yeast breads. Such cakes are often very traditional in form, and include such pastries as babka and stollen.
2. Cheesecakes use mostly some form of cheese (often cream cheese, mascarpone, ricotta or the like), and have very little to no flour component (though it sometimes appears in the form of a (often sweetened) crust). Cheesecakes are also very old, with evidence of honey-sweetened cakes dating back to ancient Greece.
3. Sponge cakes are thought to be the first of the non-yeast-based cakes and rely primarily on trapped air in a protein matrix (generally of beaten eggs) to provide leavening, sometimes with a bit of baking powder or other chemical leaven added as insurance. Such cakes include the Italian/Jewish pan di Spagna and the French Génoise.
4. Butter cakes, including the pound cake and devil's food cake, rely on the combination of butter, eggs, and sometimes baking powder to provide both lift and a moist texture.

Beyond these classifications, cakes can be classified based on their appropriate accompaniment (such as coffee cake), contents (e.g. fruitcake or flourless chocolate cake), or occasion (wedding cake, birthday cake, or Passover plava, a type of Jewish sponge cake sometimes made with matzo meal).

Cakes may be small and intended for individual consumption (for example madeleines and cupcakes). Larger cakes may be made with the intention of being sliced and served as part of a meal or social function. The cutting of a wedding cake constitutes a social ceremony in some cultures. The Ancient Roman marriage ritual of confarreatio originated in the sharing of a cake.

Particular types of cake may be associated with particular festivals, such as stollen (at Christmas), babka and simnel cake (at Easter), or mooncake.

Some varieties of cake are widely available in the form of cake mixes, wherein some of the ingredients (usually flour, sugar, flavoring, baking powder, and sometimes some form of fat) are premixed, and the cook needs add only a few extra ingredients, usually eggs, water, and sometimes vegetable oil or butter. Such mixes are available under a number of brand names, including Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines, and Pillsbury; while the diversity of represented styles is limited, cake mixes do provide an easy and readily available homemade option for cooks who are not accomplished bakers.

A cake decorated with "chocolate plastic," a fondant rose and chocolate leaves

Special cake flour with a high starch:gluten ratio is made from fine-textured, soft, low-protein wheat. It is strongly bleached, and compared to all-purpose flour, cake flour tends to result in cakes with a lighter, less dense texture. Therefore, it is frequently specified or preferred in cakes meant to be soft, light, and or bright white, such as angel cake. However, cake flour is generally not considered mandatory for good results, and its effect on the cake's texture can readily be simulated by adding corn starch and/or baking soda to all-purpose flour. Some recipes explicitly specify or permit all-purpose flour, notably where a firmer or denser cake texture is desired.

A finished cake is often enhanced by covering it with icing, or frosting, and toppings such as sprinkles, which are also known as "jimmies" in certain parts of the United States and "hundreds and thousands" in the United Kingdom. Frosting is usually made from powdered (icing) sugar, sometimes a fat of some sort, milk or cream, and often flavorings such as vanilla extract or cocoa powder. Some decorators use a rolled fondant icing. Commercial bakeries tend to use lard for the fat, and often whip the lard to introduce air bubbles. This makes the icing light and spreadable. Home bakers either use lard, butter, margarine or some combination thereof. Sprinkles are small firm pieces of sugar and oils that are colored with food coloring. In the late 20th century, new cake decorating products became available to the public. These include several specialized sprinkles and even methods to print pictures and transfer the image onto a cake.

Special tools are needed for more complex cake decorating, such as piping bags or syringes, and various piping tips. To use a piping bag or syringe, a piping tip is attached to the bag or syringe using a coupler. The bag or syringe is partially filled with icing which is sometimes colored. Using different piping tips and various techniques, a cake decorator can make many different designs. Basic decorating tips include open star, closed star, basketweave, round, drop flower, leaf, multi, petal, and specialty tips. Royal icing, marzipan (or a less sweet version, known as almond paste), fondant icing (also known as sugarpaste) and buttercream are used as covering icings and to create decorations. Floral sugarcraft or wired sugar flowers are an important part of cake decoration. Cakes for special occasions, such as wedding cakes, are traditionally rich fruit cakes or occasionally Madeira cakes (also known as whisked or fatless sponge), that are covered with marzipan and either iced using royal icing or sugarpaste. They are finished with piped borders (made with royal icing) and adorned with a piped message, wired sugar flowers, hand-formed fondant flowers, marzipan fruit, piped flowers, or crystallized fruits or flowers such as grapes or violets. Some famous kits are the Betty Crocker kits.