Let’s face it: one of the most important aspects of putting together a great birthday celebration is the cake. The sight of a delicious looking birthday cake piled high with frosting and sprinkles is enough to make most of us salivate.
If you think baking one is expensive, don’t worry – there are a number of ways to save money by using coupons from Discountrue and other special offers. And the following list of additional homemade birthday cake tips can help make your next celebration one to remember!
Freeze Cake Before Frosting
When the cake is finished baking and has not been decorated and frosted yet, the best way to ensure crumb free frosting of your birthday cake is to freeze it beforehand. This keeps the crumbs trapped inside of the cake, making for much easier frosting. Experts recommend baking the cake and placing it in the freezer for at least one night before beginning the decoration process.
Add Fruit Toppings
While you might not want to use fruit as the primary flavor for your homemade birthday cake, it can serve as an interesting and unique topping for your confectionery concoction. Fruit used for cake toppings should be pureed and chunked before being added. Don’t place the fruit inside of the batter, as this can make the cake soggier. Spread a layer of frosting to serve as a base, then add a layer of fruit, such as sliced strawberries.
Round Cakes Are Easier To Decorate
Decorating a cake becomes much more difficult when you are forced to work with a lot of edges and corners. Round cakes also make for a much easier baking process, since there is no need to coax all of the awkward corners out of the baking pan, as is necessary for a rectangular shaped cake. For even easier removal, line your cake pan with parchment paper prior to pouring your batter.
Carefully Measure Ingredients
If the ingredients of a cake are not measured accurately and added in the order that is listed on the cake’s recipe, your homemade birthday cake may not come out as you would have hoped. When you do not follow the correct measurements for ingredients, the order in which they are added and the baking times, you run the risk of having your birthday cake emerge from the oven looking deflated, since it will not properly rise.
Cooling Times
Once the cake has finished baking, a good rule of thumb when it comes to cooling time is to allow the cake to rest on a wire rack for at least ten minutes. Follow specific instructions if they are provided. Cakes that are left in the pan for too long and begin to stick can still be salvaged when they are reheated in the oven for one minute.
2 Responses
These tips are great! I’d like to add a tip for baking birthday cakes, if you don’t mind. Many time you’d like the cakes to be flat across the top (otherwise you have to cut off the “hump” that has risen in the middle of the cake). So the tip is this: before you put the cake into the oven sprinkle sugar on top of the cake! It’s that simple! Wherever the sugar lands the cake will not rise!
Thanks for the tip Tina!