Christmas Cooking Has Begun

I am conducting a little action research to bake the Cream Cheese Pound Cake to be perfect. I baked it Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday. Each time I used Aunt Birdie Lou's Cream Cheese Pound Cake recipe from Cindy Aman's cookbook. Each time, I tweaked the baking temperature and cooking time just a little and recorded the baking information and the results. I have thought for a long time that my oven might not be calibrated correctly. I purchased an oven thermometer at Target and when I tested the oven temperature using it, the result showed that the actual oven temperature was about 25 degrees cooler than the displayed oven temp. The Sunday cake was a big disappointment. I pre-heated the oven to 325 (the recipe advises 300), the make up the 25 degrees, and the cake browned too quickly and the final result was a heavy cake, not tall and fluffy. It never did really rise. I used a Pampered Chef stoneware bundt pan. On Monday, I set the oven to pre-heat to 290 degrees, since the cake browned too fast on Sunday I added 30 minutes to the cooking time. The cake rose nicely in the oven, the color was good, just the right shade of golden brown, but when I removed it from the Pampered Chef bundt pan, it fell all apart. I think that is my own fault, for trying to take the cake out of the pan while it was still too hot. I had planned to make a trifle, since the cake was torn up anyhow, but the cake itself tasted good, and Gene and I have just grab hunks of cake to eat when we want it. On Monday at lunch, Ferrel Nix, Jeffrey Popp, Peggy Bladen, and some others of us were discussing the pan I used. I had never considered that the pan would make a difference, but I decided to test this on my next try. When I baked the cake on Wednesday, I changed the pan to a regular tube cake pan, and set the oven to pre-heat to 300 degrees and the recipe advises. I was amazed as I peeked through the window at how high the cake rose for the first hour. As it went into the last 30 minutes, the cake began to fall just slightly. Since I thought this might be a result of being undercooked, I extended the cooking time to an additional 30 minutes (total cooking time was 2 hours). The final result was a cake that was the best of all three. I have no idea how it tastes. I took it to Faye to be used at a luncheon she is givin on Monday, and I think she plans to freeze it until then. I did advise her to cut it first to see how it tastes. Just in case, I'm going to bake the cake again on Sunday, set the temp to 300 and cooking time to 1hour 30 minutes, just as the recipe advises, and use the tube cake pan again. I'll post the results.

I have no idea what causes the temp differences between my oven and the oven thermometer I bought. Gene has theory (of course) that the thermometer I bought at Target might not be right, and I guess he could be right. I believe that the oven doesn't maintain the correct temperature, and/or that it heats inconsistently.

One problem I have had consistently is that when I remove the cake from the pan, the crust sticks to the pan. The degree of this happening varies from minor to a LOT. Does anyone know why this happens?

Yesterday, as I was grocery shopping, I struck up a conversation with an lady who appeared to be in her late 70's. She looked like she was one who might have baked many cakes in her years. She said that she had baked many cakes, but that she finally gave up on pound cakes because the results were so inconsistent. Well, that is revealing! I told her that my goal is to bake the perfect cake and then I'll quit! We had a nice conversation and she shared that once she has seen a recipe that advised to start the cake baking in a cold oven. Has anyone seen this recipe? I might like to try that.

I know that by now the readers' eyes must have glazed over, so I'll just end by saying that last night I baked Spritz cookies, and they are yummie! These might be Gene's favorites. I posted about baking those earlier. Today, I'm planning to bake chocolate spritz cookies.

Goodbye for now.