summer baking experiment #2

as my funds run out (i just parted with my tuition money – my first semester paid with money i earned all on my own!), i am still managing to fritter away money on my baking experiments. i guess i’ll just have to work more hours on my freelance stuff.

i have to admit that, in the absence of my (cambridge) roommates, it’s really nice that people at the office are willing to eat things that people bring in. in cambridge, we basically have a revolving door and somebody is over almost every day or night, thus creating the perfect environment to give away food after every experiment. in new york, i just don’t know as many people, nor do the people i know live close enough to just stop by in the evenings. so the office is my stand-in recipient of my baking experiments.

this week’s experiment is actually a pretty poor in terms of rating an experiment, and more a crowd pleaser for work – it’s a chocolate pound cake i’ve made several times. i like pound cake in general because it has very little artificial leavening – ie, baking soda or baking powder. instead, it derives its structure and texture from the actual making of the cake – if you don’t mix the batter enough, your pound cake won’t have the right texture. when i bought my first baking cookbook, the author expounded on the virtue of creaming the butter for a full five minutes every time. i admit that i was a young and naive 18 year old at the time, and i scoffed. i still make cookies with a wooden spoon (ie no creaming the butter), but i am a convert to creaming the butter properly for cakes. creaming the butter incorporates air into the butter, giving your cake structure and texture. pound cake is essentially a study in how to incorporate air into your batter – the standard method is to cream the butter, beat the butter and sugar for a good long 10 minutes, add the eggs one at a time, then alternate dry ingredients and some moisture-rich ingredient (sour cream, in this case), beating each in every time. so you see that by beating everything in very slowly, you develop the structure of the cake purely by mixing the ingredients together. the efficiency of the method is a beautiful thing.

so i was curious to know how hot weather affects this sort of butter-rich batter – i would expect that it would be harder to mix everything because the butter would get melty too fast. true to form, the coating i use on the pan to keep the cake from sticking – just melted butter and cocoa – refused to cool until i stuck it in the fridge. in defense of the butter, i also didn’t brush the pan with the cocoa butter until i was done making the batter, so i was probably overly impatient. surprisingly, though, the batter looks pretty much as it always does: tan, thick, airy. it was slightly shinier than it usually is, but it was nowhere nearly as bad as i thought it would be. it’s also not the hottest evening, but just ignore that part. it’s definitely warmer in the apt than it usually is at cutcat. the most noticeable point at which the butter was meltier than usual was when i creamed the butter by itself – it took very little time and was super-shiny. i was still worried when i added the sugar and it was still looking shiny, but that’s why you beat the butter and sugar together for a full ten minutes: the incorporation of air starts to minimize the butter meltage. you know what else? billington’s dark brown sugar – my favorite to use when the flavor really matters – has been really lumpy the past couple of times i’ve used it. i don’t remember it being that lumpy in the past; perhaps both times it was an old batch of sugar? i mean, i know brown sugar has a tendency to clump, but it’s been a little ridiculous.

i can smell the cake now, which is a good sign – it’s been in for about 35 minutes or so. will report back later on how it tasted.