Cake—it doesn’t matter what form, whether or not it is vanilla, chocolate cherry, or coconut—will virtually all the time come out higher should you line the baking pans with parchment. It could appear thriftier to butter the pans and end with a dusting of flour, however the mixture encourages vital Maillard browning, which ends up in the event of a thick, darkish crust that detracts from the lightness of the crumb inside and contributes to a way of dryness.
Other than selecting the best pan, a parchment liner with a lightweight coat of pan spray or oil is one of the best ways to cut back browning within the outer crust of a layer cake. This retains the underside and sides of the cake delicate and tender, and the inside gentle and moist. Limiting crust formation in layer muffins will even scale back the unpleasant look and dry texture of a number of layers of a darkish backside crust.
You’ll be able to actually purchase ready-made parchment rounds, however I haven’t got a lot cupboard space in my kitchen, so I want to make my very own as wanted. It isn’t precisely rocket science, however there is a wiser strategy to go about it than you would possibly anticipate. And no, it would not contain any convoluted origami.
A normal parchment roll is 15 inches vast, so, for a two-layer cake, our first intuition is perhaps to tug out a 16-inch sheet, fold it in half, hint, and reduce—accomplished. Downside is, that generates plenty of waste: greater than 50 sq. inches of scrap. A greater manner is to tug out a sheet of parchment, fold it right into a triangle, then reduce or tear it free; this requires not more than 14 inches of parchment (much less should you’re strategic about it).
Decreasing two inches of size will remove over 30 sq. inches of waste, a financial savings that can multiply with each layer cake (which actually provides up for these of us who prefer to make birthday muffins for family and friends). The triangle fold can be an immensely useful trick if you’re working with precut parchment sheets that in any other case appear too brief to accommodate multiple eight-inch spherical. So do not consider parchment as a waste of time or assets. Reasonably, contemplate it a worthy funding that may make an actual distinction within the tenderness and look of your favourite layer muffins.