How to Make Easy Cakes | Bake It Up a Notch with Erin McDowell

nice i was made for gifts [Music] hi i'm erin jean mcdowell and welcome to this episode of bake it up a notch where we are talking all things easy cakes easy cakes i know that sounds crazy but i just think that there is so much to be said about some of the simplest most attainable don't even need a mixer kind of cakes i think these cakes are so wonderful and often don't get enough credit for being so so excellent so i really wanted to dive in deep about some of the different kinds of very simple cakes that are out there and talk about some of the troubleshooting as always we're going to show you where things could go wrong we're going to show you ways that you can get creative with it and of course we're going to share a ton of really yummy recipes along the way if this sounds like something you'd be interested in be sure to like and subscribe so you can be made aware when all of our new episodes of bake it up a notch become available let's get baking let's talk about the equipment that you need for making easy cakes now hold on i have a lot of equipment out in front of me but don't let that fool you these cakes are so simple most of them can be made just in one bowl using regular hand tools things like a whisk a spatula or a wooden spoon every now and then i might suggest that you bring out your hand mixer and of course you're welcome to use a stand mixer if you have one and you love to use it to make easy bakes but that's the good thing about this episode is for those of you who don't have a mixer a hand mixer almost all of these recipes you can make no problem just using a little bit of arm strength and a regular old mixing bowl now most of the other things that i've got out here are just different kinds of pans because i think that that's one of the best things to talk about when you're talking about easy and simple cakes because you can take a one single base recipe and turn it into lots of different things for different occasions to serve different quantities of people and just kind of get creative with it that way so let's just talk really quick about some of these pans that are here we've got here a 9x13 pan and also a loaf pan loaf pans do come in different sizes a 9x13 is obviously a great choice for something when we want to cut it into kind of square slices or even like bar type situations i've got some shaped pans here like my bundt pan which is obviously such a great way to give a very simple cake an incredible shape and it looks great dusted in powdered sugar it looks great glazed lots of options there i've got some skillets i love baking in skillets they make a nice crusty exterior keep the inside a little bit softer i even have some of sola's favorite size bake a one skillet chocolate cake because i actually love baking in these i bake little cobblers and all kinds of little cakes in them i've got also square pans like eight by eights and nine by nines these are perfect when you want something like a 9x13 but a little bit smaller i've also got regular cake pans springform pans i've got a tube pan here sometimes this is also called an angel food cake pan because of the tube in the center and then i've also got some little individual baking dishes things like ramekins oven safe baking dishes these are all really good for when you want to make individual portions especially during the pandemic i thought a lot about how i wanted to bake but it was just my husband and i and i started making a lot more individual portions so that we could enjoy them for several days and you know still kind of get that pleasure of a dessert it also makes you feel a little bit like you're in a restaurant when something comes in like a little individual dish like this for me anyway and as always we've got our measuring tools we've got some um volume measuring cups here which normally i'm always telling you guys all about the scale and i still do believe that scale is very important scales are important we want really accurate measurements but these cakes are a little bit more flexible and this is definitely a time if you're someone who doesn't have a scale you shouldn't be intimidated by this episode there's going to be lots that you can make using just your regular old measuring cups and measuring spoons so now that we know everything that you can use to make some really beautiful easy cakes let's get baking [Music] let's talk about quick breads these are one of the things i really fell in love with when i first started baking my first bakery job we made so much pumpkin bread and banana bread things like that and i really love kind of taking a second to talk about them because most people make these and during 2020 you may have made your fair share of banana bread but i think people also forget that there's really a lot of fun ways to really dress them up and do something kind of extra or fun with them on top of it so one of the things that i love about quick breads is they're almost always mixed by hand we're just going to mix them in a mixing bowl i like to start with a whisk to mix the early parts of the ingredients the fat the sugar incorporating the eggs once i start adding the dry ingredients i usually switch to a silicone spatula or a wooden spoon the reason that i do this is once you add the flour that can really gunk up those whisk times and kind of get in there and we want to make sure the most important thing with the quick bread is we don't have a lot going on so it's really important to make sure that the ingredients are mixed homogeneously that everything is really uniform and it's all the same consistency and texture and everything's just mixed really really even i figure since we're not having to get out the mixer bowl and everything it's okay to dirty two utensils in the name of a good quick bread so one of the main things to be aware of with a quick bread is actually the moisture level quick breads often use ingredients that we're kind of trying to use as a base right things like shredded zucchini or shredded carrots or pumpkin puree things of that nature these are all inherently really moist wet ingredients so one thing that you can do when making a quick bread is kind of be cognizant of that moisture level by just adjusting it if need be and adjusting your other ingredients the example that i like to use is that when i make zucchini bread some zucchini bread or zucchini cake recipes call for draining the zucchini you squeeze the zucchini out and you try to get as much of the moisture out as possible because zucchini bread is so easy and simple to make i don't like to mess with that step and i know i'm not alone the wonderful deb of smitten kitchen feels the same way this is an easy recipe so let's not add something complicated like that in there however in the summer if your garden is exploding with zucchini or your csa is exploding with zucchini squeezing that zucchini out before you add it into the batter will actually allow you to add almost twice as much into the batter so when you're really trying to veggie pack something when you really are trying to utilize something that extra little step of kind of removing some of the moisture can be a great way to like get a little bit extra into your bread but like i said i typically keep it simple just kind of mix everything exactly as is and then i like to go kind of crazy with the inclusions you can add things like chocolate chips a swirl of nutella a swirl of peanut butter a swirl of caramel a swirl of jam we're adding a lot of potential swirls here but basically the idea is that the sky is the limit there's really a lot you can do to kind of gussy up a really simple quick bread of course other things that you can do are kind of toppings so in this case this is my cinnamon sugar crusted zucchini bread and i use a really generous amount of cinnamon sugar on the top which makes this like kind of crackly sugary kind of surface that is so good and kind of takes this from zucchini bread to zucchini cake territory and i really love that because it's really sweet and delicious on top without having to add any kind of icing or anything extra on top of it one of the pros about quick breads is that there really aren't a lot of terrible mistakes that can happen but there's a few that are worth talking about one i already sort of mentioned it's really important to mix everything evenly sometimes if you're not scraping the bottom of your bowl well you can get what i sometimes call flower bombs that's what they called them in pastry school and it's basically just everything else in the batter is mixed really well but there's like a pocket of flour in your cake we actually tried really really hard to make mistakes for this episode we had some successes at mistakes but we actually had a lot of trouble because these cakes are so simple that it is very difficult to mess them up so that's the good news as far as mistakes happen we don't have um as much to show you but here's a good example of what it can look like a pocket of flour this is like a big air pocket and because we know we mix this well i'm i'm almost certain that this was an unevenly mixed ingredient instead of being a pocket of flour it might have been a pocket of sugar in the oven that pocket of sugar melted and it formed this kind of big gaping hole the other thing that you can kind of see is a little bit of gumminess in some parts of this slice and that's just because in that portion it's a little bit too wet it actually might be a tiny bit under baked another very common problem that can happen with quick breads like this is actually over browning one of the easiest solutions for this is just to tent it lightly with foil tent the top of it as soon as you see it about the level of brown that you like give it a little bit of protection so it doesn't go too far and start getting darker than you'd like so being careful not to over bake is another really important thing to watch out for it's not just the risk of burning it and maybe having it be a little bit crisper than you'd like it also can lead to other problems like unmolding issues let's talk about a couple of ways to make it really pretty and kind of dress it up one of my favorite things to do is to make a quick bread in just a slightly fancier pan this is a really cool pan known as a charlotte pan and it's typically used for a specific kind of dessert called a charlotte but i don't make that many charlotte's and i make a lot of banana bread so while this is still warm this has cooled for maybe about 15-20 minutes but it is warmish and i'm going to go ahead and unmold it now unmolding your quick bread while it's still slightly warm is one of the kind of tips and tricks to getting it to unmold super clean and smooth and what i like to do is just pick it up with something to protect my hands from that little bit of warmth and just flip it right onto the cooling rack or whatever now that little bit of extra oomph that i added that just like actually slamming it down that's one of the things that actually is a really good tip because it helps it to release anywhere that it might be stuck it gives it that little bit of extra kind of push to just pop right out of the pan but as you can see baking it in a cool pan like this really dresses that banana bread up without doing anything else to it in addition one of my other favorite things like i said is just give it a little bit of a sprinkling of sugar a sprinkling of turbinado a sprinkling of sparkling sugar on the surface or cinnamon sugar like i have with the zucchini bread that gives it a little glisten a little extra sweetness and it's one of those very effortless kind of dressing up techniques [Music] let's talk about naked cakes which of course are not totally nude cakes in most cases but in fact are just really really delicious cakes that are not layer cakes are not full of icing or not kind of boasting some of those other um little tidbits i love these kinds of cakes and i just feel like sometimes they don't get their moment to shine because they're not quite as pretty or as exciting in some cases as a beautiful layer cake but let's talk about some of the things to make these cakes their very best you really want to make sure that any ingredient that's called for by the recipe to be at room temperature is in fact room temperature this really is essential to some of these cakes turning out really beautifully and in some cases even unmolding out of the pan beautifully so it's really um crucial to getting all the ingredients to kind of combine into this homogenous mixture i've been using that word a lot today and i'll probably use it a few more times but also to get it to be a really uniform consistency really silky really smooth really lovely adding inclusions to a really simple cake like this can really add a lot of flavor and texture and even sometimes a little bit of color the example i have here isn't necessarily the most colorful but this is a really simple delicious ginger cake and inside are pieces of chopped candied ginger we finished this half with a little bit of streusel too just to show like okay this is a naked cake but adding a little bit of streusel suddenly makes it more of a coffee cake vibe a little bit heartier leaving it simple you just get these little pops of the chewy candied ginger which is so delicious and that really takes this cake kind of up a level even though it's a very simple addition so adding inclusions like that folding those in at the end sprinkling some over the top those are great ways to kind of elevate a naked cake and you know clothe it so to speak add another layer give it a little something extra another thing that i like to do with naked cakes is add a soaking syrup soaking syrups can really add a lot of flavor kind of the same way that icing or glaze or something does add a lot of flavor and add a lot of moisture to the cake without being very complicated and there's two different ways that you can add soaking syrup you can add it to a warm cake when it first comes out of the oven when the cake is warm the syrup is going to soak in very quickly and distribute very evenly when you apply syrup to a cake that has already cooled it it more lands sort of in the area right where you put it but it still is really delicious so but kind of both have their place this is a cake that's already cooled and i'm just gonna add some lemon syrup to it and i'm going to add it right to the top but if i was doing this to a bundt cake you could really soak the sides of it too really anywhere that you want and the main thing to notice since this cake has already cooled is that it's not going to soak in quickly i'm going to brush it and it's going to take several moments for that syrup to actually get absorbed into the cake but if it's warm it's going to absorb very very quickly it's going to kind of penetrate the cake a little bit more uniformly so it just sort of depends on what you're going for if you're kind of trying to just get a finishing element a little bit of bite of that glaze flavor or if you're trying to really soak the cake through and add moisture that way like i said this is just a lemon simple syrup and simple syrup is a great way to use a soaking liquid it's just one part sugar to one part water and any flavoring that you want so some fresh lemon juice some citrus zest some kind of extract or your favorite booze to bake with are all great choices for a soaking syrup of course you can dress up naked cakes a lot of ways but to me the one way you don't really dress them up is with frosting or any kind of topping like that i usually keep it a little bit simpler things that i can bake right on like a streusel topping like i already mentioned some turbinado sugar sanding sugar something to give a little bit of texture and sparkle to the top or you can always finish them with a dusting of powdered sugar when they come out of the oven another way to make anything look like a million bucks let's talk about bundt cakes because i'm a huge huge fan i love collecting bundt pans i have one of my favorite shapes right in front of me in fact this is known as the party bunt and we're about to party right now as we talk about all things bunt related i just love a good bundt cake because it's so beautiful all on its own just by pouring it into this pan you've made something beautiful but it's also one of the ones on this docket that does have some mistakes and things that can happen to it so let's talk about some of the tips and tricks that you need to get your best bunt yet starting with unmolding it so to start i'm going to take a small offset spatula and i'm going to very gently go around the crevasses of the bundt cake here between the cake and the pan just kind of trying to gently loosen it and one of the other things i looked for which you can see right here is that the cake is separated a tiny bit from the edge it started to pull away a bit and this is a doneness indicator for most cakes when they pull away slightly from the pan but it's especially important with bundt cakes because that pulling away means it's constricted a tiny bit that's going to give us the best chance of releasing it really nice and clean which is what of course we're always hoping for now the other thing we're going to do is we're going to take our little offset right around the inside section the tube portion of the bundt pan okay once i've got it all loosened let's give it a little unmold now what i like to do i have a cooling rack handy and we are going to kind of slam it down onto the cooling rack that's the intention you don't need to pull away the pan right away when you slam it down but that slamming motion is part of what's going to help it release it's beautiful you might even call it a good bunt i'm sorry i'm just amused endlessly by this so now that we have a freshly unmolded bund in front of us let's talk about some of the other things that are really important with buns one of them is again the same thing i've been talking about over and over again which is even mixing but one of the reasons i notice it a lot with buns is because you're making a lot of cake batter when you're making a bun significantly more than you might be for a shallower cake like a 9x13 something like that sometimes this is a really big really dense cake batter and one of the things that i find is especially towards the bottom of the bowl there might be little sections of things that don't get mixed in those sections have a tendency because they're heavier than the rest of the batter to sink and what they can do is they can sink into kind of the crevices of this bundt pan and one of the things that likes to do this is sugar if you don't get all of the sugar fully incorporated in it might sink it might harden and it might be the thing that is causing your entire bun to stick to the pan and not unmold so really take the time to really make sure you're scraping well that all the ingredients are incorporated it is especially worth it when you've got an intricate shape like a bun when you're testing doneness on a bundt cake what you're looking for are two things you're looking for those edges to pull away like we already talked about and you're also looking when you insert a tester into the thickest portion of the bund which should probably be in the center region of it as well you should come out totally clean or with a few moist crumbs we got a great shot of this just to show you because i think that this is important sometimes if it comes out totally clean the cake might even be under baked it is okay to have a couple little crumbies stuck to it but what they should be is fully baked cake when you dip your tester into the cake it should not come out wet or with any kind of visible batter or stickiness to it instead it should come out if at all with a few moist crumbs clinging to it that's a really good sign of doneness and that the cake is not over baked of course in front of me we have a couple of the standard bund mistakes things that can happen that we you know try our hardest to prevent but let's go ahead and look at these the first one i've got right here is this bubbly kind of effect this bunt didn't stick it unmolded cleanly but it left large bubbles and pockets kind of where the batter didn't sink in one of the ways that we take care of that is aggressive tapping tap it really really firmly really aggressively against the countertop that helps the batter sink into all of the nooks and crannies of the pan and it also helps to pop any air bubbles that have happened naturally from the batter being a little bit aerated during mixing so we are trying to do our best to cognizantly just like break up all those bubbles so that we don't get some of that kind of pocky effect that you see here but if this happens to you this is nothing that can't be covered up with a little bit of powdered sugar action or a little bit of glaze love so this is still an absolutely delicious cake right here last but not least let's talk about the worst offender the worst bundt mistake the one that causes every baker agony and that is when this happens when you go to unmold your bun and the top portion of the bundt cake sticks in the pan and the bottom portion of the bun comes out cleanly so first of all when this happens to you of course it's very frustrating but never fear you still have a really delicious cake even the part that is stuck to the pan is super super yummy super tasty um so this is a great excuse to make a trifle and that's what we would do in a case like this we'd crumble this up with some frosting make little cake cups make a trifle make something so that we can still enjoy all this work that we did here but if you want to avoid this problem there's a couple different things that you can do first of all you want to make sure that the cake is properly baked we talked about those doneness indicators if it's not properly baked it can stick to the pan because sometimes the center is still a little bit under baked and it has a tendency to stick towards the center of the tube where it's under baked still right in here and that is going to be one of the reasons why this top portion kind of stays in another is not greasing properly or not greasing enough i like to grease my bundt pans with non-stick spray but i do find it's really important not to do that until right before you're ready to pour the batter in if you spray it with non-stick spray too soon like while you're getting your oven preheated all of those kinds of things it has a tendency to run down the sides and collect in the crevices of the bundt pan while leaving the rest of the pan not very well coated of course you can also use a pastry brush brushing it in helps you to really get into some of those grooves and make sure that it is properly and well greased finally letting the bundt cake cool too much is the other reason that it often sticks it's really important to do that on molding while it's still a little bit warm and if you let it cool too much the cake has a real tendency to kind of set itself inside the pan and it just makes it harder to unmold cleanly if at all so remember if you have this mistake happen you still have delicious cake never fear but follow some of these tips and you're gonna get a party perfect bun every time as far as making your bunt really beautiful extra pretty some other things like that going on there's a few different options and one of my favorites is to swirl two different batters together this is my toasted almond bunt and we took some of the batter out and mixed some melted chocolate into it to make some of the batter chocolaty and then it produces this beautiful kind of swirl effect when we cut into the bund but of course there's other options that you can do after baking applying a glaze is really lovely you can even cut a bundt in half and turn it into a layer cake by applying a filling into it or you can't go wrong with a simple dusting of powdered sugar [Music] let's talk about one of my favorite categories of easy cakes that exist ice box and poke cakes these are really really fun and really easy cakes i think that these kinds of cakes do not get enough love because they're often kind of deemed as really easy or sometimes even semi-homemade styles of cakes but these style of cakes are so delicious when you make them with real homemade ingredients your favorite sheet cake your favorite pudding or a flavorful liquid and you can really get creative and come up with just endless combinations to make really really really tasty and also super easy and craveable enjoyable cakes so as i mentioned poke cakes you start by making a sheet cake and then while it's still warm you use a skewer to poke holes into the cake some recipes will even advise using more like a toothpick and making tons of holes all over the thing that's a little bit better for a a liquid kind of base but for a thicker kind of base like a custard or a pudding like this pudding cake in front of me it's ideal to put larger holes using more like a chopstick or a larger skewer even um the handle of a wooden spoon we put them about an inch apart and then we slowly pour pudding over the cake aiming to get it in all of those holes and then also just kind of letting the rest come over the top as needed in this version which is a liquid a lemony cake with watermelonade that's been reduced and poured over in lieu of where you would pour the instant gelatin like the jello kind of situation then when it's done with you've poured that over it you transfer it to the refrigerator where that liquid or that pudding is going to soak into the cake make it even moister and when you're eating the cake you're going to get kind of these extra gooey delicious flavorful portions it's so wonderful after it's had a good amount of time to chill i like to put some whipped cream or just something really simple on top to frost it and that also helps to cover up any marks from our actual poke cakes so one of the things to remember with poke cakes is they're really simple and they're kind of hard to mess up but there are a few things that you can kind of do wrong one is making sure that you're poking the right size of holes and the right amount of holes for the type of liquid that you're using you can either use larger holes like we discussed but some recipes might call for lots and lots and lots of tinier holes um i've seen that a lot in something like a trace let chase cake too so that then that milk mixture can really soak in evenly into the whole cake rather than kind of be inserted in specific spots so be aware of the size of that and also don't try to rush this process one of the things that i see so often this is already such a simple cake people pour the liquid over and they put it in the freezer thinking it says it's supposed to refrigerate for several hours and i'll just do it in the freezer for 30 minutes or an hour and it'll work faster but the freezer is going to alter the texture of your liquid or your pudding and it's also going to prevent it from absorbing properly because the cake is going to become frozen it's going to make it a lot harder for it to slowly seep in i actually have an example of this right in front of me this is a cake that i made and you can see for one thing they're the same cake but you can tell from overhead here that the color of the pudding is different and that's because this one has frozen and it has become really firm it has lightened in color and it's just gonna make this almost more like a frosting that's been inserted into it rather than something that like is evenly kind of absorbed throughout the entire thing so that's something that you kind of want to avoid don't try to rush it it's already such a simple thing and that's one of the things that i love about these cakes is they're actually great to make ahead of time this is a great thing to make a day before you need it because it can sit in the fridge and actually it's also a great bake to just kind of keep around your house because you can kind of be eating it for several days it holds in the fridge and it's kind of just going to get better and better as it sits let's talk about a few ways to make them extra beautiful one of my first favorites is you're going to see with this watermelon cake because using a contrasting color of the liquid makes really beautiful kind of color variants in the slice so let me take a little slice out for us here actually come out that way yeah see this is so cool because the cake was just kind of a regular lemon cake before but where we've added this liquid it actually has a little bit of a rosy pink hue now totally natural from the flavorful liquid we poured over it which was sort of a mixture of watermelon and lemon juice that's one thing you can do which makes it really look beautiful once it's sliced of course the main thing that you want to do with these cakes is give them a little bit of a topping most simply just some whipped cream lightly sweetened a little vanilla whatever you like put some soft whipped cream over it put it back in the fridge whenever you want a cake get yourself a little slice there are so many things to love about pokecakes and icebox cakes if you haven't already picked up on it my favorite thing about icebox cakes is the versatility make a vanilla cake with vanilla pudding make a strawberry cake with vanilla custard poured over the top make a spice cake with something really delicious like citrus poured over it there's so many options you can get really creative and really create a very easy cake with a huge flavor payoff [Music] one of my favorite categories of cakes of all time is fruity cakes and what i mean by that is any kind of cake with a fruit component these are some of my favorite simple cakes because they really give fruit a chance to shine it's a great way to use up fruit when you've got a ton of it it's also even a great way to use up fruit that's almost too ripe or about to go bad because some of those make the sweetest most delicious desserts and cakes so i want to talk about a few things to think about when you're making a fruity cake the first is the preparation of the fruit some fruit is going to need to be peeled some someone's going to need to have seeds or pits removed the decision of that is completely up to you i actually don't love peeling my fruit i sort of love leaving the skin on that's sort of a personal preference but of course if you don't like it or you think it's tough even after baking remove that skin peel your fruit remove any seeds if you want to anything is really fair game the other thing that i like to talk about is how you prepare the fruit so depending on the preparation you might want to leave the fruit relatively large like halves of fruit like in this upside down cake right in front of me i have apricot halves but there's also whole raspberries so depending on how you are planning your preparation you might want to slice the fruit you might want to dice the fruit you might want to coarsely chop it are you wanting more like chunks of fruit for throughout or do you want it to be more like blended and really smooth and then you might want to kind of smash your fruit up macerate it a little bit so really think about what you'd like it to be like and then you can kind of use that as a building block for what kind of cake and you know get creative from there another really important thing to consider when making a fruity cake is the ripeness is your fruit really really juicy and in season or is a little bit firm and might need a little bit of help in the sweetness department both of these things are important to consider because really really ripe fruit could actually affect the moisture and the consistency of your actual bake it could affect the cake in some way whereas under ripe fruit may never get soft enough juicy enough whatever in the designated bake time so it's really important to think about the fruit think about what the best way to showcase it is and remember that the riper your fruit is the more it is gonna break down in the oven so if you've got really juicy really ripe summer fruit it might kind of become mush in the oven but that's okay delicious delicious in season mush and i'm talking a lot about you know peak ripeness and all of these things right now because it happens to be summer at the moment but what about using frozen fruit the general rule when you're making easy cakes like this is just don't thaw the frozen fruit typically this is kind of a rogue rule in baking i actually usually advise people to thaw the fruit because it allows you to drain off excess moisture problems like that but the reason i don't like to thaw when i'm making a simple cake like this is because it can really tint the batter if you're using something like frozen blueberries or frozen raspberries and you let them thaw completely your whole batter is going to be red or purple when you fold those into it so i like to use just frozen fruit and i would just add it at the end sprinkle it over the top generally the same kinds of rules apply as to fresh fruit just remember the general rule is don't thaw unless the recipe advises it also just while we're talking about all the different possibilities with fruit it is important to remember that typically frozen fruit doesn't work very well in whole fruit preparations for example it's not ideal to freeze apricot or peach or other stone fruit halves to use in an application like this upside down cake in front of me because they really may not hold their shape as they bake and thaw generally it's just a little bit more problematic than using chopped up or smaller pieces of fruit from the freezer okay let's talk about one of my favorite kinds of fruity cakes the upside down cake i love a good upside down cake and i'm actually just going to put one together really quickly while we're talking about it the first thing you're going to notice is that my pan is very generously buttered especially in the base and around the edge the bottom edge of the pan this is very intentional because we're not just greasing the pan here we're also including enough butter that we're going to be able to make a caramel while this cake bakes so what we're going to do is we're going to now that i've you know really generously buttered it we're also going to generously brown sugar it and this brown sugar i just want to make sure i kind of have an even coating all over the bottom in the oven with the cake batter on top this is going to melt and start to caramelize and it's going to react with the fruit that we're choosing to really just make it kind of this delicious fruity caramel kind of sauce almost without having to cook anything separately or make anything separate so we're just going to make sure that we've got pretty much the whole thing covered then i'm going to arrange my fruit in this case i'm using some sliced mango and i'm just going to arrange it in the bottom of the pan here really really tightly i want to make sure i don't leave a lot of room between slices when you're making an upside down cake like this the fruit is going to shrink as it bakes so if you have open spaces before baking you're going to have even bigger open spaces after baking not that there's anything wrong with those open spaces but if we're really trying to maximize the flavor of this yummy fruit one of the ways that we can maximize it is to make sure that we really get a lot in there some fruit is very firm and won't get soft in the oven in the amount of time that it will take the cake to bake not very many fruits are like this but i bring it up because we're talking about all the different possibilities if you were to use something like quince they might need to be a little bit poached or roasted before you use them in an upside down cake preparation but as long as it's a very tender fruit that's going to get soft in the time it takes for the cake to bake you can really use just about any kind of fruit that you want in a cake like this in the oven this mixture becomes jammy and delicious and then when we go to unmold this cake the fruit mixture will now be on the top so this is why they're called upside down cakes we build them upside down then we flip them over this version is made in a springform pan which makes it a little bit easier and less scary to flip over which i think is kind of important but one of the things that i advise is that if you're scared to turn out your upside down cake just don't put some ice cream or whipped cream on top and serve scoops of it right out of the pan it's going to be just as delicious and it'll be a surprise at the bottom instead of a surprise at the top it's important to unmold an upside down cake while it is still warm because again we've made this caramel in the base the longer that that cake cools the firmer that caramel mixture is going to become and it is most certainly going to stick to the pan but it won't be stuck to the pan as long as it's nice and hot so go ahead on take this out of the oven let it cool for a few minutes i believe i typically recommend 10 to 15 and then once it's had that just a little bit of time to rest be sure to unmold it confidently while it's still warm and you'll be glad that you did it'll unmold really much easier that way while we're talking about it let's bring in this upside down cake that i already made because this is one of my favorite ways to make an upside down cake extra special is to use multiple kinds of fruit not only do you get a few different colors going on but you get a lot of great texture and flavor when you actually eat this cake you can see we've got this beautiful glisten on it and that's that little bit of caramel that juiciness that's naturally happened but then we also have still very big physical pieces of fruit it's almost like this cake doesn't need frosting because we baked the frosting on the bottom so so delicious another delicious type of fruity cake is the buckle the buckle which is often kind of looped in with things like crisps cobblers pandoudis is really more of a cake but it can actually be made with a lot of different kinds of doughs and batters most commonly these are made from a really moist cake batter filled or topped with fresh fruit but it can also work really great with things like cornbread or other quick bread batters and in this case i've actually used my favorite drop biscuit to make kind of a biscuity buckle in the oven the baked goods sort of rises around the fruit some of the fruit sinks some of the baked good kind of pushes up around it and that's what gives it the look of being buckled it might kind of have divots in some spots very perfectly imperfect which of course we love buckles are often topped with kind of a sugary topping like a streusel or even something a little bit softer just to create some variants and texture and a little bit of that extra gooey flavor buckles are so easy they can be made in so many different pans in so many different ways with so many different fruits the hardest part about them is determining the doneness because when you insert your skewer to see if it comes out with a few moist crumbs as we advise that one of the things that sometimes happens is you hit a piece of fruit and the fruit itself is juicy and might lead you to believe that the baked good still needs longer in the oven so take care when you're testing a buckle for doneness check it in a few different places and of course if you're using a bright fruit like blueberries don't trust any blue or purple juice that you see coming out with your skewer when you're testing the doneness keep looking until you see if the doughy parts are set one of the other mistakes with a buckle is a little bit more delicious i do find that sometimes people use too much fruit of course it'll still be really tasty it won't really be that big of an issue except for the fact that there will be a lot more moisture it will become something a little bit more like a cobbler-ish if you're using a higher percentage of fruit so really just you want enough to kind of evenly coat have some fruits in every single bite but this isn't a fruit dessert with some cake it is a cake with some fruit very easy to dress these up while they're not typically iced sometimes i like to add just a little drizzle of icing or glaze which really takes this from buckle territory into kind of more of a danish vibe so my idea is serve it for dessert one night and then the next morning drizzle a little icing some lemon zest on top and serve it for breakfast the final kind of fruity cake that is just one of my faves can really be made with almost any other easy cake recipe that we've been talking about it can be made with a quick bread it can be made with a skillet cake or a naked cake definitely lots of possibilities it's basically just adding a little bit of fruit to the top or to the center of your cake on the top i sort of refer to them as fruit studded cakes and when they're in the center hiding inside i refer to them more as fruit filled cakes this is definitely another one where it's mostly cake with just like a little bit of fruit accentuated by fruit but it's a great way to use up that good stuff especially when you've got a lot of it hanging around during a good season a few different things to be aware of think about again the juiciness of the fruit less juicy fruits like this rhubarb that's on top of this cake here in a skillet um i didn't need to do anything to that i could kind of just sprinkle the fruit right on top but juicier things like berries sometimes it's nice to toss them with a little bit of flour so that they can be more suspended in the batter and not risk sinking actually right here i have an example of what it would look like if the fruit sunk we didn't toss this is blueberries we didn't toss any of the blueberries in flour and we put them kind of low in the loaf pan to begin with they all sunk to the bottom almost all of them i guess there's a few rogue ones up towards the top and they really contributed to this cake being under baked in fact you can see that there's actually a divot in the cake that's because it's so under baked in the very center it's still wet in the center we can go ahead and actually cut it open and even see yeah it's like still doughy cakey in the center you see more of the defined crumb structure over here but in the center it's really really under baked so this is something that can happen if you're not really careful with that addition of fruit especially if you're tempted to use a lot of it in this one right here i'll cut it down the middle we arranged the fruit to be right in the center of the cake we tossed it in a little bit of flour we put half of the batter down towards the bottom then the fruit then more batter it did sink a little bit that's normal it's heavier and more dense than the cake batter but it stayed nicely suspended so that we get some of it right down the center of each slice of cake love to see that i encourage people to get creative with the flavors that are inside including inclusions or flavorful additions like extracts or citrus zest things like that and remember they can be benefited from a little sparkling sugar turbinado sugar something over the top before baking it brings a little shine a little texture but you can also finish these with a really simple glaze some kind of icing after baking and of course i'm never gonna say no to these being served with whipped cream or ice cream gotta love a fruity cake skillet cakes are another favorite of mine but they are also sort of in a category all their own because they can really be made with a lot of the other types of cakes we already talked about naked cakes work well in skillets quick breads work well and even fruity cakes there's really a lot of things that you can bake in a skillet and some cakes that are specifically baked in skillets to kind of give a certain presentation or whatnot first let's talk about what to look for in a skillet it is really important to make sure that your skillet is oven safe a lot of skillets obviously are meant to withstand heat on the part that touches the stove top but they might have plastic or other components on the handles and the edges so it's really important to make sure that yes in fact your skillet is oven safe after that you can really choose different kinds of materials obviously non-stick surfaces work particularly well in baking as they often do but one of the things i prefer to use is cast iron cast iron will make a little bit of more of a crust on the outside while keeping the interior a little bit softer but also not using cast iron using another kind of material will help prevent that more intense crust on the outside so those are all some factors that you can consider when you're choosing the right skillet for your skillet cake skillets also work really really well for caramelizing effects which makes them uniquely good for upside down cakes and i also use them when i'm making things like tart to tan for that reason too skillets are often used to make what the brits call self-saucing puddings or self-saucing pudding cakes pudding cakes they have a lot of different names but it's basically a really really simple cake where the batter is poured into the skillet and it's a little bit under-baked almost and also formulated in a way where it separates creating more of a sauce effect at the bottom and a cakey effect on the top and then you can eat it warm and kind of get this incredibly comforting delicious skillet dessert i love making these for last minute dinner parties even a simple brunch as a dessert at the end of it it's really a lot of fun because you just throw a couple ingredients together throw it in a skillet and serve it right when it comes out of the oven one of the main special concerns for skillet cakes is over browning especially when you're using a cast iron skillet so be cognizant of your oven rack placement it's generally ideal to keep these cakes right towards the center of the oven if they're too low in the oven the bottoms may get too dark and if they're too high they might get especially browned and crisp at the top edge so just be aware of that and i often advise airing on the side of under baking that's especially true for the pudding cakes where you really want a softer effect but even for something like this blueberry biscuit buckle this is the same the recipe calls for it to be made in a 9x13 but i made this version in a skillet just to show that it can be done and um it's definitely important even with something like this to underbake it a little bit or it'll be a little bit more crispy like a bar rather than soft and delicious like a cake it's easy to serve skillet cakes warm some things like this pudding cake need to be served pretty much right out of the oven to maintain that gooey delicious texture other items should be cooled a little bit something like this blueberry buckle i would let it cool for five to ten minutes just because that fruit itself can really hold a lot of heat it might almost be too hot unpleasant steaming to eat in that regard there's lots of fun ways to finish these cakes you can top them with some macerated fruit before or after baking give them a little bit of that juiciness you can always finish them with a little bit of sparkling sugar you can add a topping something in that vein but of course one of my favorite things to do is serve them warm with a bunch of ice cream piled right in the middle give people spoons and let them just enjoy skillet cakes are that perfect combination of super simple relatively quick and also fun to present and serve i mean who wouldn't want to see this coming to a table i love skillet cakes you can definitely get creative and choose your favorite recipes try them inside the skillet [Music] it's the cupcake episode again just kidding we're going to talk about mini cakes especially because a lot of these really easy cakes really lend themselves well to being baked in minis i mentioned that during the pandemic i started baking more in minis and individual portions i liked it because i could freeze some for later enjoy some now it's really a lot of fun so just a few things that you really need to know about mini cakes because really a lot of the other styles of cakes that we're talking about here could be applied to a miniature situation so just a few general things one of the first things is being aware of how full to fill your pans obviously when you're working with different depths and sizes you might experience not knowing for sure how far to fill them and generally my advice is only filling them just over halfway you definitely don't want to fill any pan over three quarters of the way full because that's not going to give it enough room to grow and it might just kind of end up leaking or kind of spilling out baking over the edge of the pan a few other things to be aware of if you add any inclusions things like fruit chocolate nuts make sure that you chop them a little finer than you might for a larger cake because a really big piece of fruit or a really big nut a really big piece of chocolate is really going to affect the texture and kind of the way that your miniature cake bakes it might kind of stay softer in the center it might have too much moisture in different pockets so definitely think about that keep things chopped a little bit finer i also advise for mini cakes to err on the side of under baking a little bit if you need to over baking mini cakes just makes them especially dried out especially unpleasant they might form a little bit too much of a crust and be kind of crisp on the outside edge these are all things we want to avoid we want our mini cakes to be nice soft and very very moist and i think that miniature cakes look so pretty kind of all on their own i mean it doesn't get much cuter than this let's be real but i also like to advise you know bring out some of the baking containers that you don't always get a chance to use here are some pretty ramekins that i have that i baked a mini cake in here's another and i also love to use these freestanding paper molds this is basically like a cupcake liner but it doesn't need to go into a muffin pan so it's just a freestanding mold that can go right onto a baking sheet like this you can add your batter into it and it makes it especially perfect because then you can store these freeze them but it also makes them really really easy to unmold because the paper just peels right off it's so simple so easy could not love that anymore when we're already talking about very easy cakes [Music] thank you so much for joining me for this episode of bake it up a notch where we talked all things easy one bowl no mixer required kinds of cakes these are some of my favorite cakes and i hope that this really opened you up to the kinds of possibilities that are out there and gets you creative remember all of these yummy recipes are available on food 52 and they are linked in the video's description below and if this inspires you to bake please please please send me your bakes i want to see them tag me tag food52 use hashtag bake it up a notch so we can see all your bakes we made so many cakes for this episode we couldn't even fit them all in front of the camera now for this final shot there are so many yummy things that you can do from quick breads to buns and everything in between i hope this episode has inspired you and it's a delicious episode for sure so i can't help myself i'm gonna have to take a bite this is the chocolate pudding icebox cake oh my gosh this is good um remember turn the camera off you're gonna run out of battery because i'm gonna keep eating it's like oh no aaron we've had enough we got the shot don't care oh yeah i got a wave and stuff i'm gonna stop eating my cake for long enough to tell you thanks again for joining me for this episode and as always [Music] you

Channel: Food52

Views: 511,106

Keywords: Food52, food, cooking, recipe, chef, foodie, cook, home cooking videos, erin mdcowell, erin jeanne mcdowell, bake it up a notch, how to bake easy cakes, how to make easy cakes, how to bake cake, zucchini bread, ginger spice cake, blueberry buckle, lemon raspberry skillet cake, watermelon poke cake, chocolate pudding cake, fruity cake, how to bake cake without mixer, baking tutorial, easy cake recipes, erin mcdowell cake, icebox cake recipe, bundt cake recipe, skillet cake recipe

Id: 1JSvh-5x5BE

Length: 51min 55sec (3115 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021