Have No Fear Baking a Cake

 

It shouldn't be hard, but sometimes it is.  We're talking about baking the perfect cake, and sometimes things go wrong.  Not to worry, Leah Collins with America's Test Kitchen stopped by Tonia's Kitchen to talk about what you can do to make sure your cake comes as perfect as possible.  Leah told Tonia that in her book, appropriately named, The Perfect Cake, there's a whole section about going crazy and having fun while baking.  Sprinkled in with that...some helpful tips about the ingredients. Case in point, butter. Lea says if the butter you're using snaps, it's too cold to use. She adds most ingredients should be at room temperature. If you're new at the art of cake baking, it's a definite plus to have this book at the ready.

Image courtesy of Joe Keller, America's Test Kitchen

The Crispiest, Butteriest Cookies You Can Bake in Three Minutes

And when it comes to these kinds of cookies, you best bet on the butter quotient, simply because in this case, butter does make it better! Gesine Bullock-Prado, who is the author of the new cookbook, My Vermont Table, stopped by Tonia's Kitchen to talk about how these self-described "cozy" cookies, and the butteriest you'll ever make. Gesine told Tonia that these are Maple Tuiles, a French cookie by heritage, kicked with the seasonal flavor of maple, arguably one of Vermont's most famous exports. Gesine told Tonia that even though these cookies are fancy French, you only have to bake them for three minutes. Your reward, a crispy, buttery cookie you'll adore!

4 tablespoons (1⁄2 stick; 57 g) unsalted European butter (I use Vermont Creamery cultured butter), at room temperature.

1⁄2 cup (96 g) maple sugar (I use Choice Maple out of Hartford, VT)

1 large egg white, at room temperature

1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

1⁄2 cup (60 g) unbleached, all-purpose flour (I use King Arthur)

1⁄4 teaspoon fine sea salt

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Combine the butter and maple sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix until smooth. Scrape the bowl and add the egg white

and vanilla bean paste. Mix until combined. Scrape the bowl again, add the flour and salt, and mix until combined. Alternatively, you can mix this by hand in a bowl with a flat, wooden spoon. In that case, make sure your butter is slightly softer than room temperature.

Place about a teaspoon of the batter on a silicone baking mat and spread into a very thin 2-by-4-inch rectangle. Bake for 1 to 2 minutes, until the batter is golden brown. While the cookie is still warm and pliable, roll the cookie around a chopstick into a tight cylinder. Once you get a hang of the process, you can graduate to making two cookies at a time.

Excerpted from MY VERMONT TABLE: Recipes for all (Six) Seasons by Gesine Bullock-Prado Copyright © 2023. Used with permission of the publisher, Countryman Press. All rights reserved.

Raymond Prado photo credit