BAKING INGREDIENTS:

FLOUR: Brief history of flour for you; it is used for cake baking milled from wheat of the botanical genus of Triticum. Wheat may be hard or soft, terms that refer to the actual hardness or softness of the wheat berries, kernels, themselves.Hard wheat produces flour rich in glutten forming proteins-substances that make doughs elastic and springy, desirable in a bread dough or some pastry doughs, but not in a cake batter. This is why cake recipes call for all-purpose flour or cake flour both of which are made from soft wheat and are weaker than the strong hard wheat flours and self-rising cake flour, mixed with salt and baking powder.

EGGS: The most essential ingredient in cake baking, responsible for the structure, lightness and richness of cakes, fillings and frostings. Always use large eggs (24 ounces per dozen). Remember that the weight is by the dozen and the weight of individual eggs may vary. This doesn't much affect recipes that use whole eggs or yolk but you may want to measure the egg whites by volume using a liquid measure cup.



SUGAR: It contributes more than sweetness to cakes. In butter cakes, it helps the batter absorb air through friction between the butter and sugar during mixing. In any cake, it contributes tenderness and crust color and enhances the cake's ability to retain moisture. There are granulated sugar, brown sugar, confectioners' sugar, corn syrup, honey and mollasses.

FLAVORINGS: Whether it's spoonful of vanilla extract or a little grated lemon zest, flavoring can transform an ordinary cake into a perfumed delicacy. Vanilla extract is available in specialty food stores. Flavouring oils are in citrus which should be used in small quantities.

COFFEE: Fresh brewed coffee are the best to use for as a flavoring. Easy directions to follow: Premeasure doses of coffee wrapped in paper, a little like a tea bag in boiling water until the coffee has cooled completely. Then squeezed out the pods and keep the resulting triple strength espresso in the refrigerator in a covered jar. It adds such an excellent coffee flavor that you don't need to use very much.



FRUIT: Ripe fresh fruit may be difficult to find in this time of plastic wrapped trays and sticky labeled fruit. These are the list of good fruits to use in most of the recipes: Golden delicious apple is a good all purpose apple. Pears, Lemons, Oranges, Tangerines, Lime, Peaches and Cherries.

CHOCOLATE: Good chocolate tastes good before you add it to other ingredients. With the exception of unsweetened chocolate, which is found in the baking aisle of most grocery stores. It is better to buy chocolate for baking in the candy isle. It is especially important to choose a chocolate that tastes good on its own. If the recipe mixes chocolate with butter, eggs, sugar, flour and flavoring, the taste of the chocolate isn's quite as clear as it is in simpler recipes.

BUTTER: This has to be of good quality to make an outstanding cake or buttercream. Always use unsalted butter, and make sure it is fresh by using this simple test. Unwrap a stick of butter and scrape the surface with a dull knife, removing a strip about 1/4 inch wide. If the butter below the surface is lighter in color, the butter has oxidized which means it has been exposed to air and the outside has begun to turn bad. Never accept oxidized butter from a store; return it.

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