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What is the difference between Wedding and Birthday cake?
clarification: talking about the actual cake, not the decorations or layout. Supposedly wedding cake always tastes better than a birthday cake.
Are there different ingredients in a wedding cake? I've known people to only buy expensive birthday cakes from wedding cake bakers.
Just curious if there is a difference in the mix or the baking process.
Know Your Ingredients
Wedding CAKE
The main ingredients of shortened cakes are fat, sugar, eggs and flour. Some recipes also call for chemical leaveners (baking powder or baking soda), milk, buttermilk or sour cream, flavoring extracts, and a pinch of salt to heighten the flavors.
A feature that characterizes shortened cakes--also known as "high-ratio cakes"--is their high proportion of fat and sugar to flour. These ingredients are what make cakes tender, moist and dense. Since there are so few ingredients in these cakes, use high-quality butter and pure flavoring extracts, measure with perfect accuracy and follow the recipe directions to achieve the best results.
Butter is usually the fat of choice, or a combination of butter and shortening. Shortening is easier to work with, because it is already partially aerated and remains at the same texture over a wide temperature range, but butter gives incomparable flavor and mouth-feel
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The Mixing Method
The "creaming method" is the same mixing technique you use for a batch of chocolate chip cookies--for cakes, however, you keep beating air into the mix. Over-mixing, which would cause the cookies to spread flat when baking, is hard to do when creaming butter and sugar for a cake. Beat room-temperature butter with granulated sugar (superfine, castor, or "bakers' sugar" is best) until the butter is very fluffy and noticeably lighter in color.
Add room temperature eggs one by one, beating after each addition. Adding all of the eggs or too much cold liquid at once will cause the batter to look curdled. Add any extracts or flavorings after incorporating the eggs.
Once you start adding dry ingredients, be careful not to over-beat the batter. The gentle handling is critical to creating a fine, not tough, texture in a cake. Many recipes alternate adding dry ingredients and any additional liquid; mix well after each addition, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Stop mixing when each addition is well incorporated
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Before You Begin
Make sure that all of your ingredients are at room temperature, particularly the fat, eggs and any liquid you may be using. It's essential that all these items be at room temperature:
If the butter is too cold, it won't beat evenly; it won't incorporate air and increase in volume.
When eggs and liquid are cold, the batter will curdle. Instead of a smooth, homogenous batter, it will separate into liquid and fat. You can still proceed with the recipe, but the cake's texture may be denser than you like.
If any of the ingredients are warm, the fat will melt and you won't be able to whip air into the mixture.
The second thing you need to do before mixing the batter is to thoroughly sift together all the dry ingredients. Cake flour and cocoa powder are especially fine, and form small lumps that won't get broken up during the mixing process. Unevenly mixed ingredients can result in a cake with big holes and tunnels through the middle, riddled with lumps of raw flour. Use a sifter or a wire whisk to make sure all lumps are broken up and those ingredients are really and truly mixed together.
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More Cake Tips
You don't have to have a stand mixer to make a butter cake or pound cake, but it sure helps. Begin by beating the softened butter at medium speed until fluffy and light in color, about three minutes. Add the sugar and continue to beat for about four minutes longer. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. With the mixer on low speed, add the eggs one at a time and beat for several seconds between each addition. If the batter does curdle, just continue whipping it; it should smooth out once it warms up.
After you've beaten in the eggs, you must mix in the remaining ingredients as gently and quickly as possible to avoid deflating the air you've so carefully beaten into the mixture.
Slow the mixer down to low speed and sprinkle in about 1/3 of the dry ingredients.
Mix the batter while pouring in about 1/3 of the liquid (this includes milk, buttermilk, sour cream, juice, or coffee).
Continue in this fashion until all of the ingredients are incorporated into a smooth batter.
Any garnishes--nuts, fruit, chocolate chips or other additions--should be very gently folded in by hand after the batter is mixed.
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Baking Cakes
Pour the batter immediately into a prepared baking pan--either greased and floured, or greased and lined with parchment paper--and bake in the preheated oven. As the cake bakes, it will rise high in the middle and turn a dark golden brown on the outside. Depending upon your oven, you may need to rotate the cake pans on their racks to ensure even baking.
Don't wait until the cake has pulled away from the sides of the pan to test for doneness: test it by pressing gently with a fingertip near the center. The cake should slowly spring back. (You can also insert a toothpick or cake tester near the center of the cake; it should come out clean, with no batter sticking to it.) Once you remove the cake from the oven, let it cool on a wire rack. Run a knife around the edges of the cake pan to loosen the cake, and invert the pan onto another rack or plate. Cool completely before slicing or frosting.
BIrthday CAKE
INGREDIENTS
2 cups white sugar
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
3 egg yolks
1 egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup boiling water
DIRECTIONS
Mix together the buttermilk with the baking soda. Set aside. Cream shortening, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Beat well.
Add buttermilk and baking soda mixture.
Sift dry ingredients, and add to creamed mixture.
Add boiling water, and mix well.
Pour into a greased and floured 9 x 13 inch pan. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for approximately 35 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool. I frost with cream cheese frosting.
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